Joe Wein’s blog

135 responses so far ↓

• 1 j // Jun 23, 2008 at 21:37

  Hey Joe, like the passion in your post. 2yrs ago, I brought an open mind to the topic of HHO gas and water fuel cells and whether it could actually produce the benefits you cited in your opening. I documented every article I could find on the topic at http://aquygen.blogspot.com and really, what it comes down to for me as to whether this is viable and important technology is whether or not a dynamometer test shows that it is what it says it is. Referring to the 2nd law of thermodynamics assumes it’s a correct scenario to apply it to in the first place. There are real world tests being done today—trucking fleets, buses, etc. These folks are relying on dynamometer proofs of concept and then based on that installing them on some test vehicles in their fleet. In california, public money is being spent on this technology. So, bottom line—ask them to prove it and you’ll be surprised what you find. The national hydrogen association endorses this technology by the way. Google it or check out my site:

  http://aquygen.blogspot.com

• 2 Mike // Jun 24, 2008 at 05:16

  Where have you been guy? Wake up! You have the mindset of OPEC.

• 3 joew // Jun 27, 2008 at 08:35

  Mike, I would rather call it the mindset of a scientist.

  I would like nothing better than a clean source of energy, without contributing to global warming. However, the known facts do not support these claims, which have not been proven under verifiable conditions. If you make extraordinary claims about some technology, you better had solid evidence.

  Isn’t it odd that claimed free-energy devices always get used in cars that have existing gasoline engines or battery sets, rather than running these gadgets standalone? If they weren’t run in tandem with some conventional energy source that would prove very quickly if they work or not, but I suppose that may not necessarily be what those “inventors” want.

• 4 joew // Jun 27, 2008 at 10:18

  j, if these HHO generators actually improved fuel efficiency as claimed then it makes no sense that manufacturers don’t use them. Sure, some manufacturers have developed technology that might compete with “hydrogen on demand” *if* the latter actually worked. However, just because Toyota has hybrids and a couple of manufacturers have efficient direct injection diesels, why wouldn’t everybody else use this stuff rather than spending millions licensing hybrids and diesels from those other companies? Economically this water power claim makes no sense at all, even if you ignore the most basic laws of physics.

  Ignore all the car manufacturers in North America, Europe and Japan: Why does China, India, Cuba – you name it – not use “free energy” from water (assuming it actually worked), countries which have *no* vested interest in existing car technologies and which are importers of oil just like we are?

  Again, it makes no sense at all. To claim that you can make energy from a machine that takes water as input and outputs only water, requires not only to ignore the laws of science, it also requires one to believe in a worldwide conspiracy.

  I visited the site you listed. What I would like to see (and what I didn’t find there) was a government study or certification that actually verified the efficiency claims made by these HHO generator salesguys.

  One of your blog posts mentions that none of these kits have been submitted for EPA verification by their makers yet. I wonder why not, if they work as well as they claim.

• 5 Scott // Jun 29, 2008 at 01:32

  Actually, there is quite a few papers on it. Here are a couple. Some have a cost.

  http://ntrs.nasa.gov/search.jsp?R=29367&id=7&qs=No%3D10%26N%3D4294952967

  http://www.ntpefs.com/idaho_national_laboratory_hydrogen_study.html

  http://www.sae.org/servlets/SiteSearch?charset=iso-8859-1&ht=0&qp=&col=portal&qs=&sae_qt1=&qc=&pw=100%2525&ws=0&la=en&qm=0&st=1&nh=25&lk=1&rf=0&oq=&rq=0&si=1&ql=&jsp_name=simplesearch.jsp&qt=hydrogen+injection+assist&ofType=ALL&x=0&y=0

• 6 Paul Faulstich // Jun 29, 2008 at 10:27

  A well thought out argument, but missing one key piece. Those who add a small amount of hydrogen to the gasoline do not claim anything that violates any of the laws of thermodynamics. The issue is that in an internal combustion engine, especially diesel, not all the fuel burns. Hydrogen, being highly dispersive and having a broad burning range (lean/rich), does not add extra power in and of itself. The claim is that injecting a small amount of hydrogen increases the amount of fuel that burns . Without the hydrogen injection, that fuel is potential energy going out the tailpipe. The energy gain by burning that otherwise unburnt fuel could quite feasibly more than offset the energy loss to produce the hydrogen.

  I have not personally tested any of these systems, although the links above make it clear that some pretty good scientists have looked at it and confirmed it. The Idaho Laboratories report states that the primary reason is the flame speed – a property which is a direct result of the two factors I listed above. Essentially, the high flame speed allows the flame to travel throughout the entire combustion chamber, ensuring that all (or nearly all) the fuel burns.

  An additional question is the long-term impact to the engine. I do not know if there have been any studies about that.

  So, the injection claims may have merit. However, any claims to run a vehicle purely on water are certainly bogus. Your arguments are valid for that scenario.

  Paul Faulstich
  President
  Hydrogen Energy Center
  http://www.HydrogenEnergyCenter.org

• 7 Jeff Morgan // Jun 29, 2008 at 15:47

  I agree with Paul. The argument presented above is based wholly on the contention that the automobile will operate solely on HHO. That premise is wrong. The correct premise of the HHO generators is very eloquently described by Paul above: the injection of HHO into the air/fuel mixture enhances the amount of gasoline actually burned during the combustion process and reduces the amount emitted as waste.

• 8 joew // Jun 29, 2008 at 22:45

  Hello Paul and Jeff, thanks for the feedback.

  The argument that HHO injection into the intake manifold somehow increases the degree to which fuel is burnt assumes that in modern engines a significant amount of fuel does remain unburnt under average driving conditions. I don’t believe that is actually the case. Incomplete burn would mean high hydrocarbon and CO levels in the exhaust gas, which would be incompatible with meeting current emission standards in developed countries.

  While a catalytic converter on a gasoline engine could mask incomplete combustion in the engine, that would not be the case for diesel without catalyst. Nevertheless diesels tend to have low CO levels except at high altitude or heavy loads (whenever you see soot clouds). The fact is, diesel engines run with excess oxygen at partial loads, especially turbo diesels, which ensure that their CO levels are pretty low and there’s little extra energy to be gained from completely oxidizing that small amount of CO left, if HHO injection could achieve that.

  As for gasoline engines with emission control systems (exhaust catalyst with oxygen sensor), they aim for a mixture that achieves complete combustion, but at full throttle tend to deviate from the ideal and run richer. The leftover CO then is primarily a function of a relative lack of oxygen. HHO injection would not be able to change that, as it adds no oxygen beyond what is needed to combust the hydrogen.

  How much HHO gas is actually mixed into the air intake? One kg = one litre of water (roughly a quart) produces about 2300 litres of H2/O2-mixture. A 2 litre engine running at 2000 rpm breathes in 2 x 2000 x 60 = 240,000 litres of air per hour. The FAQ of water4gas.com claims 2700 miles per gallon of water, that’s about 700 miles per litre and probably 15 or more operating hours. What we get then is 160 litres of HHO per operating hour, which is only 1/1500 or 0.067% of the air intake of the engine. Note that mixtures of less than 4% hydrogen in air (1/25) won’t even burn. It is hard to believe then that 60 times less hydrogen will have a significant impact on the combustion of the gasoline/air mixture.

• 9 Edmond // Jul 1, 2008 at 04:06

  Hi, I am very interested in looking at those claims and was very suspicious about it. However, I like to add my 2cents here.

  What about another scenario ? Assuming that gasoline contains double bonded hydrocarbons, as that type of ethene, so this means that there are some c=c bond in the mixture. The energy requires to ignite and burn this type of product is quite high. By adding hydrogen and oxygen into the gas mixture at a high temperature and catalytic environment, some of the hydrogen is combined with those c=c product, making them regular c-c bond, as this process is called hydrogenation.

  Now, hydrogen amount decreases so the ratio coming out from the water electrolysis decreases, meaning more oxygen. Both will hugely increase the fuel efficiency.

  I don’t believe the claim that it is a new energy, but it is merely a question of fuel and engine efficiency.

• 10 Edmond // Jul 1, 2008 at 04:10

  Information on hydrogenation:

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogenation

• 11 joew // Jul 1, 2008 at 16:28

  Hello Scott, a few comments about the Idaho National Laboratory study on the California Environmental Engineering test on the diesel engine.

  They quote studies according to which flame velocity increases if “less than 1% of the inducted air volume” is supplemented with hydrogen.

  In my example of the 2 litre engine running at 2000 rpm which inducts 240,000 litres per hour that 1% would be 2,400 litres of H2 per hour. It takes some 4,6 kWh of electricity to make one cubic metre (1,000 litres) of hydrogen in the most efficient idustrial electrolysis equipment (which means it’s going to be significantly more in the hobbyist “jam jar” type electrolysers described in those e-books, but I’ll ignore that for now). 2,400 litres therefore take at least 2,4 x 4.6 kWh = 11 kWh of energy per hour, which is a power of 11 kW or 14 hp. To put that into perspective, average car alternator max out at between 1 and 3 kW. A generator at 85% efficiency would draw about 16 hp in mechanical power to produce 14 hp = 11 kW of electrical power. Given the electrical losses in electrolysis and the efficiency of a four stroke engine, the produced hydrogen will only supply enough energy for 10% of that, about 1.6 hp. For fuel efficiency to remain neutral or even improve, the engine effectively would have to produce at least some 14.5 hp more from its existing gasoline or diesel fuel through improved combustion.

  Note that for petrol (gasoline) engines faster combustion (higher flame velocity) is not usually desired: it’s what leads to knocking, which destroys engines. High-octane fuel, which contains slow-burning additives like MTBE, ethanol or methanol burns more slowly, allowing its use in higher compression engines where low-octane fuel would burn too violently. Diesel engines are different, because there the fuel is not premixed with air before spark ignition. It’s injected into the compressed air and burns as its droplets travel through the combustion chamber to reach oxygen.

• 12 joew // Jul 1, 2008 at 16:34

  Edmond, I don’t think hydrogenation is a factor here, for two reasons:

  1) Oxygen (O2) has a greater affinity to hydrogen (H2) than do the alkenes that can hydrogenated to alkanes. Simply speaking, you get more energy out of burning hydrogen with oxygen than hydrogenating for example ethene to ethane.

  2) Oxygen itself has a higher affinity for the unsaturated carbon bonds than does hydrogen. Therefore you’d get oxidation (of either hydrogen or hydrocarbons) before any hydrogenation could take place.

  For both reasons very little hydrogenation would take place in the presence of free oxygen.

  Also, you state that hydrogenation leads to more oxygen being available by taking the hydrogen out of the mix. Even if hydrogenation would take precedence over oxidation (which it doesn’t), it would ultimate not free up any oxygen because the hydrogenated hydrocarbons require more oxygen to burn than the unhydrogenated hydrocarbons. The final oxygen balance therefore doesn’t change.

• 13 KC Demoyse // Jul 3, 2008 at 02:46

  Im sorry to hear all you ignorant people that cannot belive one another, first of all it takes 1 horspower to produce 25 amps at full load with a typical alternator, and my pwn hydrogen booster that I created in HIGHSCHOOl takes only 2-5 amps. get your stuff straight and do a little research, it also helps to do little experiments instead of sitting on your but in front of a computer.

• 14 Dave // Jul 3, 2008 at 03:26

  Okay, as someone who spent a number of years in the automotive industry, I’d like to take a stab at things here. And if what I cover is too elementary for some of you, then I apologize for that.

  First, a diesel burns by compression, not spark. This means that, instead of a single spark point that has to spread throughout the combustion chamber, the fuel is ignited more or less simultaneously. This makes for hotter combustion, creating more power in the form of torque. It also explains why diesel engines knock.

  Gas engines, however, do shove a lot of unburned fuel out the exhaust valves. In the early ’80s automakers introduced exhaust gas regeneration (EGR) in which exhaust gases are piped back into the exhaust manifold to collect this unburned fuel as use it. The flaw with this is that, eventually, the exhaust has to leave the tailpipe, meaning that only a small percentage of gasses are recycled. It’s also important to note that, due to all the emissions control equipment that started stacking up and sucking horsepower in the ’70s, engines ran much hotter and as a result much of the unburned fuel was burned inside the exhaust system (where it didn’t do anybody ANY good). because this occurred upstream from the catalytic converter, tailpipe emissions were roughly what would be expected form complete combustion.

  I know that there was burning inside the exhaust system simply due the the amount of heat generated (if you didn’t have a heat shield under your 1975 or later car, your carpeting would catch fire), and the amount of soot inside the exhaust system (fuel that burned inside the exhaust burned cooler and generated a lot more particulate matter as a result).

  As far as the practicality of these HHO systems, I ahve never had any direct experience with them. However, given that a normally aspirated gas engine produces around 18MM/Hg of vacuum at idle but can drop to 3 or 4 (or less) under hard acceleration, and that diesel engine do not produce vacuum at all (they have to have supplementary vacuum pumps) I’m a little skeptical of a system that purports to add something to the fuel mix without an injection system.

  My two cents.

• 15 Bob // Jul 4, 2008 at 03:18

  Hey Joe, I’m glad to see that someone else is being pragmatic about this “technology” instead of believing the impossible on blind faith. I’m a chemist have been debunking this on several forums and it seems that it is me against the world. It is good to see that I’m not the only person who knows this is a scam.

  In the end, the arguments used by supporters of water for gas always boil down to “it’s a conspiracy”. I think when that is the only argument left on your side that it is time to admit you’re wrong. I mean, come on – do they really think Newton’s laws of thermodynamics were created as part of a global oil conspiracy??? That is just crazy talk.

• 16 joew // Jul 4, 2008 at 18:09

  @KC Demoyse:

  I don’t doubt that you can generate *some* hydrogen with 2-5 amps of current, but it won’t be enough to have any real impact on how much fuel your engine uses. That current at 12 V is a mere 24-60 Watts of power, so at 5 kWh per cubic metre of hydrogen (5 Wh per litre) it will produce 5 to 12 litres of hydrogen per hour at best. The engine sucks in hundreds of thousands of litres of air per hour. As a result, the little bit of hydrogen will be too diluted (worse than 10,000:1) to make any difference whatsoever.

  These hydrogen generators are a placebo whose only purpose is to get people to send cash to the snake oil salesmen who peddle them and to the shills who advertise them for kickbacks.

• 17 joew // Jul 4, 2008 at 21:49

  @Bob:
  Yes, I’ve come across the conspiracy talk too. It doesn’t make any sense to me either, even if you disregard the science aspect.

  No matter what one may think about countries like the US or in the EU, what reason would there be for countries like China, India or just about any country that is a net oil importer to suppress or ignore energy saving technology?

  None of these explanations by the “water fuel” lobby (excuse my pun) hold any water.

• 18 victor // Jul 5, 2008 at 03:36

  Hi Guys, i dont seems to agree with the analysis that is not actaully possible to run car on water.
  From what i ve seen, people are doing it and it working as expected. Because someone has spent donkey years in automobile industry does not mean that he will know all…. knowing fully well that we re in technology age and research keeps going

  The question i would like to ask is that which one out of the paraded “water fuel” products have u guys tried before making analysis.

  http://www.carpoweredwitwater.blogspot.com

• 19 joew // Jul 5, 2008 at 08:30

  Victor, you’re entitled to an opinion of course and you’re welcome to try and use facts to convince me that I’m wrong and you’re right, just as I’ve tried to do for my point of view.

  It is said that extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. Automobile manufacturers with billion dollar research budgets are struggling to beat their competitors by 5 or 10 percent and then some guys claims mileage improvements of 40 or 50% from a $50 or $100 kit using a jam jar, a rubber hose and some copper wire. This doesn’t pass the common sense test.

  Some of the claims made would violate fundamental laws of physics. Most of the people peddling this stuff don’t seem to have more than the most basic grasp of science.

  If the makers of these kits want me to believe that what they’re selling is more than snake oil, they are very welcome to submit their products to the EPA or similar national institution for testing. Until they do I reserve the right to question the accuracy of their figures.

  Every car manufacturer submits its cars to such testing before being able to claim fuel economy figures in their advertising. Toyota, GM and Volkswagen don’t expect me to buy samples of all their cars for private fuel economy testing for me to decide which one is best. So what’s so different about the “water fuel” guys that you expect me to buy their kits on trust?

  I checked the URL you gave. That blog mentions only a single URL, which in turn is a site shilling for the runyourcarwithwater.com scam, using an affiliate ID of chemmy1379. Are you “chemmy1379″ and do you get money for every purchase someone makes at that site after coming in with your affiliate ID? If so, how much?

  My views are not tainted by economic interests: I don’t hold any oil company or automotive stock. Instead I buy fuel like everyone else. I currently pay 190 yen per litre (US$6.80 per US gallon) of unleaded premium fuel and consequently I will soon be swapping my Audi A4 for a Toyota Prius, which is supposed to arrive next month.

• 20 joew // Jul 5, 2008 at 08:53

  runyourcarwithwater.com is registered via Domains by Proxy, Inc. That is, the real registrant has chosen to hide his identity behind a proxy service. I wonder why a legitimate business would do that.

• 21 joew // Jul 5, 2008 at 10:19

  Victor, you say “people are doing it and it working as expected”.

  The only part of those websites that support fuel saving claims (though not necessarily the numbers claimed) is when they start messing with the oxygen sensor. For example, “water4gas.com” shows a picture of an oxygen sensor (lamda probe), accompanied by the explanation: “You will learn several methods, in fact ALL the possible methods to lean the air/fuel mixture. Shown here is the simplest and cheapest of them all. It is the one method that gained 56% better mileage in my Ford Bronco-II.”

  The oxygen sensor in a car is used by the engine management to balance the fuel/air mixture so that both CO/HC and NOx are minimized in the emission control system (exhaust catalyst).

  Disabling it makes the engine run on a lean mixture (more air than needed to burn all fuel), which causes an increase in smog-causing NOx from the exhaust pipe. Effectively that part of the smog control system stops working. It also makes the engine run hotter, which can damage your pistons and valve seats.

  You don’t need to hook up a hydrogen generator to get better fuel mileage from running the engine lean, but either way you’re risking the need for a new engine, so any saving at the pump may be only in the short term.

• 22 Ozz Mata // Jul 8, 2008 at 02:36

  I’d just like to add that I appreciate this discussion. I first learned about running cars on water by clicking on an AD on CNN.com.

  I’ve been a Ford engine performance tech for the past 10 years, so it was rather odd not to hear Ford any other car maker out there really going after this concept.

  Whether the claims are true or not, I can’t say as I myself haven’t tried it, but I do plan on buying a small cheap car I can afford to try this out on and burn it to ground if need be.

• 23 Bob // Jul 8, 2008 at 06:34

  Here is a post I made on a different blog when confronted with “but so many people use it and it works for them – how can you deny that?”

  Why are hundreds of people using this? Because it is easy to get scammed but very hard to admit that you’ve been scammed. There is also the kind of placebo effect that can occur anytime someone is manipulated by the power of suggestion. There is more to the placebo effect than just “believing it will work, so in you mind it works”. People will do things to contribute to making it work – they’ll be more conscious in the way they drive. That alone can improve gas mileage by 30+%. They’ll round down gallons and round up miles when calculating mileage. “Belief” biases have been proven to exist even when trained scientists are doing research and are aware of their snares. People will use their “best tank” data (ie, one time it worked out to 45mpg, so a person claims the car regularly gets that mileage) instead of the average data. There are so many ways that people can inadvertantly cheat to get the results to avoid undermining the expense and effort of buying and installing the system (and of course not wanting to admit you are wrong after hyping something like this to a bunch of people). These phenomona are the scourge of science and always have been. There are numerous examples of scientists even duping the scientific community because they fell into these traps, and some of them still won’t admit it even after being fully discredited (look into “cold fusion” if you want an example – in fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if there wasn’t a “conspiracy theory” crowd claiming that the cold fusion experiment was successful and that the government is supressing it for XYZ reasons, because conspiracy theorists are usually nothing more than people using really bad science).

• 24 Craig // Jul 8, 2008 at 14:20

  Wow
  Mindset of a scientist hey
  I am sure a scientist would do his own tests.
  I red all the blurb on the net and thought why not.
  I took 2 sheets of stainless about 8″x8″ and folded them in half stuck them in a glass jar with 2 teaspoons of bi carb connected them to a battery and wacked it in my thirsty pig of a nissan patrol. I noticed the difference immediately.
  I added a second cell and did a 40 kilometer run up the highway. I went from 3.5 ks / litre to 6.7 ks / litre.
  I then did the same to my v6 3.9ltr station wagong and went from 8 ks / litre to 11.8 ks/ litre .
  both cars are on lp gas around town both car are about 30% better on fuel
  so ha
  You cant tell me it doesnt work

• 25 Bob // Jul 9, 2008 at 04:16

  I found this nice sticky post on the Mythbusters website that everyone should read. He goes through all the thermodynamics calculations and proves that this is impossible:
  http://community.discovery.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/9551919888/m/2321969559

• 26 Copparam P Ashok // Jul 10, 2008 at 01:04

  Great work Joe. I had put my message similiar to yours, though it is pretty short, in many of these sites. I am not sure whether they have put it up there! You had put it up really in detail.

  The only thing which I have no knowledge about, is the effect of the HHO gas in the combustion chamber (cylinder) increasing the efficiency of gas. I searched the web on this with no success. I personally wish it does, considering the gas price. Is there so much of energy content left in the exhaust gas?

• 27 SPARKY // Jul 10, 2008 at 03:14

  Don’t believe in conspircy??!!
  Watch “Who Killed the electric car?”

• 28 Arturo // Jul 10, 2008 at 05:11

  Most of the posts on here seem like pompous “armchair” scientists with severe limits to their thinking and mindsets. Why? Because every naysayer HAS NOT INSTALLED A SYSTEM ON THEIR CAR TO TEST FOR THEMSELVES!!! It’s idiocy to make proclamations about another’s claim without PROVING it wrong.
  joew, look at Craig’s post and PROVE HIM WRONG!

  Intelligent people look very foolish when they resort to “armchair” science in an effort to disprove someone they accuse of doing the very same thing! ~ Making a claim without proof.

  Now, I am not an advocate of either side – but I will say this – NONE of you naysayers have built a system, installed it, tested it, and told us that it does not function. We do, however, have a littany of people who have done myriad of tests and say it DOES work, including Craig above.

  I, like joew and the rest of you who say it’s “Impossible” SHOULD do, am going to spend the USD$100 to build and install a water/hydrogen hybrid system – and scientifically record my fuel consumption changes. I will remove the system and forget about if it doesn’t work. If it does work, when I share the news I am sure the fools who say it will not work will tell me it’s because I wanted it too so I fudged the numbers. Pathetic….

• 29 Ride On Water Fuel Guy // Jul 10, 2008 at 17:40

  Wow. great blog….I agree with everything you say here.

• 30 Bob // Jul 11, 2008 at 05:03

  Sparky, I guess you didn’t hear about all the new electric cars coming out. You want to know who killed the electric car 20 years ago? Lack of technology to make it work good enough for most people. Now we have much better batteries and computer systems to control everything (not to mention outrageous gas prices), so these things have finally made electric cars practical. It wasn’t a conspiracy.

  Arturo, if there was a movie that was incredibly offensive to you, would you rush out to the movie theatre and support it with your money so you can prove to everyone it is offensive? I’m not supporting that garbage with my money! Do you realize how many gas saver scams are out there each claiming to to work even though NONE of them actually work? Should I run out and buy those as well? Why would I want to give my hard earned money to crooks for a product that won’t work? How many people have to prove that this garbage doesn’t work? Do we all have to buy it before we are allowed to critisize it? I’m sure the people stealing money by selling snake oil would LOVE IT if that was the code of ethics on critisizing a product – you have to waste your money on it before you are allowed to say anything negative. That is ridiculous!

• 31 joew // Jul 11, 2008 at 07:52

  Arturo,

  in this day and age where consumers are supposed to be protected from fraudulent claims by unscrupulous vendors, do we still have to test stuff individually at our own expense (even if the claim defies common sense)?

  In the 21st century, do I really have to buy a jar of snake oil and drink it to see if it cures my illness before I can call it junk medicine? Last that I know, any pharmaceutical company these days has to prove effectiveness and safety before they can make any medical claims for a product. They can’t even sell it otherwise.

  Likewise, Toyota has to submit their cars to the EPA for crash and fuel economy testing before they can claim the Prius is safe and does 47 miles to the gallon (or whatever), same for other manufacturers.

  None of these jam jar kit vendors have submitted their kits to any comparable testing.

  I am not even aware of any road tests from car magazines, which evaluate cars in real life conditions and who certainly might be interested if this stuff worked.

  The only “evidence” we have are claims by people like “Craig”, which can’t be verified because all we know about him is the first name under which he posts here.

  If I were a modern day snake oil vendor who makes money from gullible people who buy such kits, maybe I’d post here too and claim some kit doubled my mileage. It would be in my economic interest. It would be in my interest to get people to try such kits, because each person who tries it spends $50, $100 or $300 on it and that’s how the scammers make money. So of course they’ll tell be telling people to try their snake oil before voicing an opinion, because that’s how they generate sales!

  If there was an EPA report out there that stated clearly once and for all if this stuff worked or not, there would be no need for consumers to give it a try (and fork over cash to a vendor for the priviledge of testing his unproven technology for him). The onus is on the vendors to prove their products work, not on us sceptical consumers. If any vendor wants to convince me that their claims are solid and my scientific understanding is wrong, fine, post better scientific arguments here or have the EPA test this stuff.

• 32 Sam // Jul 12, 2008 at 02:42

  JoeW,
  I have read and have to agree, You can’t prove that the Water devise does not work. If you REALLY want to prove it’s a scam.. Then build one and try it. I think as a consumer and a person who is feeling the effect of Big Oil in America, I just can’t buy into either argument for or against. I just find it hard to believe that simple water could be so powerful but at the same time I think it takes some real arrogance to call this thing a scam without positive proof from the naysayer.
  Why don’t you build this thing and THEN tell us if it’s a scam!
  As a lifelong skeptic, I have found that you can’t say something is impossible when you have not tried it yourself.
  Try it, then let us know the TRUTH!

  Thanks
  Sam

• 33 Sam // Jul 12, 2008 at 06:50

  Additionally,

  the article from the Mythbuster site is full of numbers that every person won’t understand. The person posting at that site also has not tested the devise or theory. Bottom line… Test it… if it works it works… if it doesn’t then sue the people who sold you the info for false advertising or false claims..
  What a novel idea!! Imagine that.. making a business own up to it’s claims!
  Perhaps you should try this Joe, and show us your court papers after the fact as proof.

  Of course in America here we have false claims by businesses all the time and no one ever seems to stop them.. Like, Verizon as an example. Seen the ad where they claim that your covered and there are no dead zones for you Cell phone? Wrong.. I even loose a signal when I am in SIGHT of a verizon tower. And what about the oil companies? Demand is so high and Volume is low, so the price goes up.. Sure! That’s why the oil company execs take home $50 million dollars a QUARTER!! One guy.. $50 Million!!

  Thanks

  Sam

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• 35 steve // Jul 14, 2008 at 08:54

  I have to agree with Joe..And appreciate the effort here by all. But I go with “REALLY” Like on Saturday Night Live…LOL

  Gas engines now running on water.. “REALLY”
  Water is greatest gift to mankind no doubt and to be respected and appreciated. But I agree if this were true the big companies, auto giants, investors and the like would have done this and made there fortunes long ago. Even a single inventor would have found angel capitol and
  this Kit would at very least be offered by every auto dealer at purchase time as well as the huge
  automotive after market.

  Cars running on Water.. LOL
  And how about OJ for President?

• 36 Ben C // Jul 14, 2008 at 17:03

  Hello,
  There may be many companies out here that are selling this product for big proffit but really if you do a simple search on youtube you can find out how to build one very easily. I plan on building one from sratch this week. I am going to be using a glass jar for the initial test but for my final version I will be using plastic tubes and such. I will document my progress and I will tell you all if this is real or not.
  Personally looking at the facts on you tube and such if you build it right you can dramatically improve you gas mileage. But I can be wrong.

• 37 Bob // Jul 15, 2008 at 00:00

  Hey Sam, how do you know you can’t fly? Have you ever jumped off a building and tried it? Your argument that you have to try something to know it won’t work is just wrong. Quit using it. Water for gas is either scientifically sound and it might work or it isn’t scientifically sound and it won’t work. In this case it is the latter. No one here has provided an argument that has provided any scientific basis for this product.

• 38 Bob // Jul 15, 2008 at 01:49

  Ben C, seriously, You Tube is a terrible place to get facts. There was a time when the FTC didn’t regulate advertisements back in the 60s and earlier when you’d see all kinds of crazy gadgets for sale – anything from x-ray glasses to body builder supplements that would turn you from a skinny twerp to a hulking monster in 7-10 days (one of my favorites was an advertisement for menthol cigarettes telling people that doctor RECOMMEND them to treat a cold!). People from that era learned to be skeptical of these advertisements and knew better than to believe them. We aren’t used to blatently false advertising, but now, thanks to the internet, it is back. There are all kinds of vehicles on the internet for spreading lies without retribution and this generation hasn’t yet realized that there are people who will sell all kinds of lies just to get your money. Buy enough of these products and you’ll learn.

• 39 kai // Jul 15, 2008 at 12:25

  The model T was originally an electric car. Hmmm, lack of technology? But for cheap fossil fuels all cars would have been electric…

• 40 Ben C // Jul 15, 2008 at 13:50

  @Bob
  Well I don’t know if the youtube videos are real or not. What I do know is how to make the same generators they are using. So I am going to make a generator without buying a kit or instrution plans or what not. I plan to scientificly test this and and hopefully this works. On paper it looks impossible but there are forums where people are saying this works. So the truth won’t be reveiled until we actually test it in real life. That is how many things are discovered is by breaking the boundries. Newtons laws weren’t just discovered by caclulating it on paper but by physicals tests.

  I will be filming my progress and posting it on the web. I will give you all the link when it is up and running. FYI I am not affilated with any of the running on water companies.

• 41 Bob // Jul 16, 2008 at 23:36

  Newton, like all great physicists, was a mathematician and his work was based in mathematics. Physics in general is based in math.

  Here is the problem in this scenario. The concepts that you are testing have been understood for a very long time. There is nothing new here. You aren’t going to “discover the wheel”. The problem lies in your own understanding of science. You don’t really understand the science that is happening here, so you think something that is impossible is actually possible. As I’ve hinted at before, it is kind of like when a kid thinks he can fly by flapping his arms hard enough. He is able to believe such folly because he doesn’t understand the science (and because he is letting his personal desires interfere with rational thought). To me, this “water for gas” movement is nothing more than that – a childish fantasy of getting very good gas mileage by “flapping your arms”. Good luck!

  Meanwhile, real breakthroughs are happening every day by real scientists who are trying to make the world a better place. The more people buy garbage like “water for gas”, the more other shiesters realize there is a market for this stuff, and more scam products will enter the market shadowing real technology (ie, you probably know nothing about direct injection or pneumatic energy storage which are a couple more recent things that are being done to increase efficiency that actually WORK). If nothing else, you could argue that if the money spent on these scams were spent on legitimate research, our energy problems would be solved that much sooner.

• 42 Ben C // Jul 17, 2008 at 08:00

  @bob
  I am very aware of different technologies. I am not your average joe. I love science and all the new technologies being made by people.
  I am also aware that hho generators is an old technology.

  Newton was a mathmetician but do you think he discovered new theories by just playing with math on paper? No he observed and tested and then came up with the math for those tests.
  Now I have a theory that physical happenings can’t all be represented by numbers. It has worked so far but I don’t think it will work forever as we discover more and more stuff about our universe.

  All I am trying to say is that this hho generator in your car can work or not. Math isn’t going to prove it one way or another, it can make an estimate as to what will happen. I may not understand the science of what’s happening but if I get positive results then something is happening.

• 43 joew // Jul 17, 2008 at 13:28

  @SPARKY who recommended watching “Who Killed the electric car?” and
  @kai (“But for cheap fossil fuels all cars would have been electric…”):

  Electricity is not an energy source (except in naturally occurring cases such as lighting), it’s an energy carrier because its energy comes from other sources, such as burning coal or fuel oil or from flowing water. For example, in the United States 49% of electricity is generated by burning coal, another 20% by burning natural gas, both of which are fossil fuels. Therefore to say that electric cars are an alternative to cars using internal combustion engines that run on fossil fuels largely misses the point, as the bulk of the electricity used by plug-in electrics would still come from fossil fuels.

  The situation would be radically different only if the electricity to charge car batteries were to come from wind power, geothermal, solar or nuclear energy, which currently it does not. So when you’re discussing plug-in electric cars (or hydrogen for that matter), you always need to discuss how the electricity (or the hydrogen) will be generated, what the primary energy source will be. No car that needs a coal-fired power station to run is “zero emission” or “CO2 free”.

  A “water-powered” car doesn’t have a primary energy source at all, therefore it can’t work. It’s a perpetual motion engine hoax that fronts for a money making scheme.

• 44 joew // Jul 17, 2008 at 13:37

  @Ben C:
  “I may not understand the science of what’s happening but if I get positive results then something is happening.”

  If positive results can be obtained, then why does none of these kit vendors have their technology verified by the EPA? Why doesn’t any one of them have their cars road-tested by a car magazine of their choice in any country of their choice? Why are none of these wild claims independently verified by any kind of authoritative institution?

  If these kits worked, their sellers could only gain by having them verified and having the facts exposed to a wider audience. They don’t seem particularly interested in that.

• 45 Pete // Jul 19, 2008 at 05:40

  Your governments, big oil companies and the IMF (International Monetary Fund) do NOT want you to have this technology! Besides all of the little guys selling these water fuel hybrid kits on the internet, you will not see in the near future commercially available water hybrid engines for sale en masse because the IMF, big oil companies and your governments are afraid that the global economy, which revolves around oil, would collapse! That’s why you see so many naysayers regarding this hydrogen on demand from water car kits.

• 46 joew // Jul 19, 2008 at 19:14

  Pete, your argument about a global conspiracy doesn’t make any sense. The rising cost of fuel is *harming* economies, as consumers are cutting back everywhere they can to still be able to meet their fuel bills.

  Far from leading to an economic collapse, a surplus of oil would stimulate the world economy as it frees up demand for other goods and services (ignoring for the moment that cheap oil would not be sustainable). If gas prices rise a lot of people stop eating out, or they cut back on travel and anywhere else they can. This costs jobs. It makes it more difficult for politicians to get reelected, from Jimmy Carter to G. W. Bush.

  Countries like Japan or Germany that have no domestic oil production have nothing to gain from suppressing a technology that (if it worked!) would save them billions of dollars in imports and insulate them from price shocks.

  Countries like China and India are only just starting down the path to wide availability of private cars and setting up a car manufacturing industry. They would have *no* vested interests in protecting any particular technologies. Why wouldn’t they employ “water power” if it worked?

  Why would North Korea trade away its nukes for fuel oil if it could simply make free energy from water in jam jars?

  This global conspiracy argument is implausible. I frankly can’t see why any thinking person would buy into it.

• 47 run a car on water // Jul 20, 2008 at 12:52

  I am not a scientist nor do I profess to be, but if Hydrogen releases 5 times more energy as you have stated over gasoline, then why would the mileage be about the same. That doesn’t make sense to me. The bottom line is this. You can bad mouth anything and put any spin on it that you want, but have you actually tried to build one? If not I would recommend that you not knock it until you tried. The world is full of inventions that science has said that could not be done, but someone figured it out.

• 48 joew // Jul 20, 2008 at 22:42

  The factor of five was a guestimate from memory. Actually, the energy of 1 kg of hydrogen is the equivalent of about 4 litres (weighing about 3.2 kg) of petrol / gasoline.

  Here’s how that factor works in practice: A petrol engine is about 20% efficient. That means, the energy of 4 litres of gasoline produces 80% heat, while only the equivalent of 0.8 litres of gasoline is available in mechanical energy to drive an alternator. When you then generate electricity and split water with it, again 50% or so is lost as heat. You generate 0.1 kg of hydrogen, the equivalent of only 0.4 litres of gasoline. When you burn 4 litres of fuel to produce the equivalent of 0.4 litres of fuel, you have really burnt an extra 3.6 litres of fuel for no benefit at all!

  The hydrogen produced in the “HHO generator” is not a power source at all. It’s more like driving with your handbrake on. All you’re doing is to make your engine work harder (burning more fuel) while generating waste heat, with no possible net gain.

  There is no positive effect from “HHO generators”, only a negative one. In practice however you’re unlikely to notice: Thanks to the small size of the jam jar systems their negative effect on fuel economy is too small to really notice.

  I don’t have to build this system any more than I have to go out and buy a bucket, fill it with water, punch a hole in it and then carry it around to see if as the water leaks out the water level in it rises or (as common sense would suggest) falls with time. If the bottom line of a closed system is a net *energy loss* it can not be a viable energy source.

  If you want to prove otherwise then you’re quite welcome to post some scientific facts here to back up your point of view. Alternatively, have it tested by the EPA or the staff of a car magazine or any other reputable third party. I won’t hold my breath for that to happen.

• 49 Will // Jul 21, 2008 at 14:26

  I would like to add a little input of my own…
  law of thermal dynamics states the hotter something is to the colder end increases efficency alone, if the fuel is burnt hotter like in high octane rating fuel it is more power. You are right if the computer thinks the fuel is lean it will use more fuel not less, if more of the fuel is burnt then less Oxygen is in the exhaust. That is why you want to trick the computer into thinking other wise. I the amount of Hydrogen that is generated is enough to burn the unspent fuel more efficiently then it will also produce more heat, and power. If Hydrogen gives an extra kick in the cylinder then it will be able to replace gas that would burn partial way instead, which means it will help in that since also. I want to try this in a vehicle myself I have a curiosity of a skeptical scientist, see with the general populace if you get to in detail of how something works it confuses them then they don’t want to buy something, beyond that the Toyota hybrids are using the same system just not burning Hydrogen the electrical alternative is actually a less efficient way of doing this. When using more conversions in your system more energy is lost due to heat. The hydrogen system uses heat as a useful process in changing it into mechanical energy, I would like to know more on what you think..

• 50 Will // Jul 21, 2008 at 14:38

  I think the best test of this is set up a system with the avg joe that does not pay for the system and has no benefit from this system except better fuel economy, and have them drive like they normally do with out knowledge of this system and see if they notice a difference

• 51 will // Jul 21, 2008 at 15:59

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGaesE0kUDw&feature=related

• 52 buffordboy23 // Jul 21, 2008 at 21:24

  Joe,

  You claim that most people that use these devices have a rudimentary understanding of science. Your main point of argument is that the laws of thermodynamics say such results with this device are impossible. However, I disagree with your opinion and would even suggest that you don’t have a complete understanding of the science behind the operation of such a device as do many antagonists, who only base their arguments solely off the laws of thermodynamics.

  The truth is that hydrogen, with its unique and inherent characteristics, changes the combustion parameters which can lead to improved fuel economy if this balance is right–you can debate this balance but not the truth behind the science. Hydrogen addition to gasoline SI engines has been studied extensively in may scholarly peer-reviewed journals and the results have shown that hydrogen addition reduces the specific fuel consumption of a vehicle relative to a gasoline alone. Hydrogen is very diffusive and has a very high flame velocity; upon the spark ignition, this leads to a more complete burn of the gasoline within the cylinder. This makes sense because it is known that a substantial amount of gasoline does not get combusted in an SI engine and remains chemically unchanged until it enters the catalytic converter.

  I do think that many private individuals and companies who are selling the device on the internet are only trying to make a quick buck, but like I said earlier, the idea can work if the balance is right. Moreover, I have witnessed many people who claim positive results with device don’t actually understand why it works–this is probably the fundamental reason for the large debate on the internet and various forums. I was one of these individuals who gave my own erroneous theories initially as to why the device worked. I continued to research the applicable science beyond the laws of thermodynamics and now I know how the device can work. See the link for a detailed forum discussion on this topic–it contains a lot of my previous misconceptions but also a lot of scientifically valid arguments that can support the beneficial operation of the device (you can’t access the images of graphs and data from peer-reviewed unless you are a member of the forum).

• 53 buffordboy23 // Jul 21, 2008 at 21:25

  Sorry, here is the link:

  http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=240385

• 54 Bob // Jul 21, 2008 at 23:46

  buffordboy23, now the arguments are getting recycled. Your argument has already been brought up and the answer is that current engines only leave about 1% of the fuel unburned. Are you saying that burning an extra 1% is going to increase mileage by 50% or more?

  To everyone else (especially people who have done this and claimed results). The real problem is that too many nonscientists are testing these devices and have no clue how to do a real scientific experiment. None of your tests are blinded, are they? You probably don’t even know what that means? How can I trust that you aren’t driving differently to get better results after installing one of these systems?

• 55 buffordboy23 // Jul 22, 2008 at 01:09

  Bob,

  I need to see a reputable a source on your 1% claim. If what you claim is correct, then burning this extra gasoline would only result in a small increase in the total energy from combustion. Assuming that a car uses about 1.5 grams of gasoline per second (a good approximation), then burning this extra 1% (o.015 grams) only results in a net increase of energy not more than “700 joules per second” based off of the combustion energy of gasoline per kilogram of stoichiometric mixture (2.79 MJ)–see post #59 on the forum link that I provided for more detail.

  If you do your research you will see that the specific fuel consumption of a gasoline SI engine can be improved dramatically with small amounts of hydrogen (not necessarily from electrolysis devices) on the order of 0-10% mass fraction of gasoline. These results are supported by many different scientists, who publish in peer-refereed journals. So, based on your 1% figure from earlier, you are saying that their results are fabricated–you can see some actual sources and actual graphical data on my posted forum discussion link. This is not likely with the large volume of papers on the topic. Are you sure that your not quoting the percentage that leaves the tailpipe? The catalytic converter does alter a substantial portion of unburned hydrocarbon molecules that weren’t combusted.

  Moreover, the arguments posted on this page about the flammability limits of hydrogen in an SI engine isn’t valid either. It’s too simplistic–the 4-75% flammability limits are under standard conditions, which is certainly not the case inside an engine. Pressure and temperature affect and can change the range of the flammability limit. In addition, as the gasoline and air inside the engine undergoes combustion the ratio of the substances will change so quickly in a short interval of time that hydrogen could be combusted as a secondary reaction, even under standard conditions–the minimum ignition energy of hydrogen is only 0.02 mJ. Moreover, if we assume that the already stated arguments in regard to the flammability limits were true, then this would also imply that the published research results are fabricated.

  I recommend that you read carefully posts #38 and higher to see the real viability of such a device. I even provide data from scholarly articles, so that you can determine this for yourself with any particular set of car data and specifications.

  Sure, you don’t have to trust me. I don’t blame you since it such a hot topic. Instead, place your trust in the numbers, scientific logic, and experimental data which show that such ideas are plausible. Your degrading remark that I don’t what a blind test is shows to me that you never referred to my posts on the provided forum link–there I have provided a detailed scientific analysis regarding some key aspects of this problem. Your current hastiness and clenching grasp onto simplistic arguments is preventing you (and many others) from exploring the deeper aspects of the problem which show that the idea is plausible. Feel free to respond however you wish, for my purpose on this forum is completed.

• 56 Bob // Jul 22, 2008 at 01:57

  No, the amount that leaves the tail pipe is in parts per million (ever had an emissions test?). I’ll find some sources for you.

• 57 buffordboy23 // Jul 22, 2008 at 03:46

  I guess I have one more post.

  Bob,

  If you do find this source, you still have to compete with the fact that a whole range of scientific literature supports improved specific fuel consumption when small amounts of hydrogen are added to gasoline. So if you do find the source, all this means is that I am wrong about questioning the 1% figure. The scientist’s results are still valid despite the efforts of your search.

  Here is something else to think about. In general, the combustion of hydrogen with gasoline tends to decrease the burn duration of the already present gasoline within the engine cylinder; the result is an improvement of the engine’s thermal efficiency and its capacity to do work–again, backed by research. Your 1% unburned gasoline statistic cannot refute this.

  Your better off trying to refute my other arguments on the provided forum link.

  Parts per million is a dimensionless quantity, just like percent. Quantities can be discussed in a variety of ways to persuade readers to believe one thing or another. If I tell someone that I put 12 liters of hydrogen gas into my car engine every hour, they may think this is a large quantity, yet in actuality, it is about 1 gram. However, and for comparison, a car typically uses 1.5 grams of gasoline per second.

• 58 Bob // Jul 22, 2008 at 05:56

  Keep in mind that to reach 1%, you need 1000ppm.

  “there should be relatively little HC and CO in the exhaust for the converter to burn (a few tenths of a percent CO and less than 150 ppm of HC when the engine is warm).” http://www.aa1car.com/library/converter.htm

  Emissions LIMITS in Colorado for pre1970 cars (which don’t have catalytic converters):

  1970 and older CO:5.5ppm, HC:1000ppm

  So even in older cars, 1% hydrocarbon emissions is considered the LIMIT.
  http://www.aircarecolorado.com/passenge.htm

• 59 buffordboy23 // Jul 22, 2008 at 21:20

  Bob,

  I see that I was wrong to question you on the 1% claim. I should have had my facts straight earlier.

  However, you can’t just overturn the results of numerous scientific studies which show that small mass fractions of hydrogen improve the specific fuel consumption of an SI engine. The addition of hydrogen increases the flame velocity of the spark ignition (I know, already stated), which tends to make the gasoline/air mixture burn quicker; this means greater thermal efficiency and more capacity for the engine to do work per same amount of gasoline.

• 60 joew // Jul 22, 2008 at 23:37

  buffordboy23,

  in the thread whose link you posted you calculated that to get 1% hydrogen by weight to gasoline would take 9 kW of electric power for hydrolysis. That’s about an order of magnitude more than the 1 kW (70 A at 14 V) your average alternator provides.

  This raises the question how you are going to achieve better efficiencies through a faster burn with the tiny amounts of hydrogen that *can* be produced with the advertised equipment.

  Also, your own figures on the efficiency of producing hydrogen using engine power are somewhat optimistic. 60-80% efficiency on electrolysis is unrealistic, when even the best large-scale industrial equipment only manages 55%. I think you’re unlikely to get 50% in a car. Also, the efficiency of the engine + generator is likely to be less than 30% as gasoline engines typically manage no better than 25% and typical car alternators are 50-60% efficient, resulting in a combined efficiency of 12-15% instead of 30.

  Overall this means that probably only 6-7% of the energy from gasoline burnt to drive a generator end up being available as hydrogen again. The other 93-94% is a net loss that you would have to make up for in improved efficiency simply to break even again, let alone to improve mileage.

• 61 buffordboy23 // Jul 23, 2008 at 00:22

  Joew,

  I thank you for reviewing my work.

  Your right to question my assumed efficiencies. I actually used values given in scientific scholarly articles (this doesn’t mean that they are correct). Anybody can input their own expected efficiency values into the data and scientific arguments on posts #48, 59, and 65 to draw their own conclusions.

  My analysis showed the upper ceiling of what was theoretically possible based on the car specifications; I really do not believe that it is possible to obtain a 1% hydrogen relative mass ratio. Since the actual energy needed to produce 1 gram of hydrogen is about 5 times greater (using my efficiency values) than the theoretical value, we would see a larger and larger energy loss with more and more hydrogen production. I posted a new analysis on the thread which explains why this is true. However, if you infer values for hydrogen mass ratios less than 1% from the data already provided on the graph, it is possible to see energy gains, and thus fuel conservation–of course, this should be your judgment, not mine.

  Personally, I believe that the device does work, but in a manner different than what the marketers of these devices claim–note that I never bought anything from any of these companies but learned everything on my own for free. I really expect that 10-15 grams of hydrogen production is possible per hour (about a 0.2-0.3% mass fraction); supposedly they claim 2 grams. I think that people and companies are trying to make a quick buck off of the idea with some advertising schemes–for example, one-quart of water lasts months–to hide the real truth behind the maintenance requirements and durability of the devices. I found that one-quart of water can get used up in a couple of hours. The device that I use needs maintenance on a daily basis and appears not to be very durable due to the breakdown of the electrodes. What consumer wants a product like this? Platinum electrodes don’t come cheap either.

• 62 Bob // Jul 23, 2008 at 04:24

  buffordboy23, I’ll help you out a bit. The only thing left is the possibility that it somehow improves the efficiency of the Carnot cycle. You should study up there and see if you can find a loophole in Carnot’s theorem that would allow for such a thing. I’m 99.9% certain there is nothing there to discover, but that is pretty much the only rock left unturned here (unless you want to claim that cold fusion is occuring under your hood).

• 63 buffordboy23 // Jul 23, 2008 at 06:16

  Bob,

  You make a good point but research does show that hydrogen addition to gasoline improves the thermal efficiency. For example, from the following citation

  Y. Hacohen and E. Sher. FUEL CONSUMPTION AND EMISSION OF SI ENGINE FUELED
  WITH H2-ENRICHED GASOLINE. Proceedings of the 24th IECEC, Arlington, VA, USA, 1989

  it reads verbatim on page 2485 the following:

  “The burning velocity of a hydrogen enriched gasoline is higher than that of gasoline/air mixture and, therefore, the actual indicator diagram approaches closer to the ideal Otto cycle diagram and a higher thermodynamic efficiency is achieved.”

  I provide a few graphs from journal articles on my forum link which show the improved the specific fuel consumption with hydrogen addition, which is a direct result of increased thermal efficiency. Originally, I had a personal bias because I believe that the device can work, but I try my best in my more recent posts to give info that is unbiased so that uninformed readers can judge the quality of the product for themselves rather than relying on overly-simplified scientific arguments from antagonists and blind-faith testimonials/personal theories from proponents.

  If you are interested, send me an email and I will send you some data and graphs from various journals regarding any of your specific questions, so that I don’t consume this whole forum with a large number of posts.

• 64 buffordboy23 // Jul 23, 2008 at 22:46

  These are good points, but here is an alternative and more enlightening way of looking at this scenario.

  Comments previously mentioned by Joew,

  “How much HHO gas is actually mixed into the air intake? One kg = one litre of water (roughly a quart) produces about 2300 litres of H2/O2-mixture. A 2 litre engine running at 2000 rpm breathes in 2 x 2000 x 60 = 240,000 litres of air per hour. The FAQ of water4gas.com claims 2700 miles per gallon of water, that’s about 700 miles per litre and probably 15 or more operating hours. What we get then is 160 litres of HHO per operating hour, which is only 1/1500 or 0.067% of the air intake of the engine. Note that mixtures of less than 4% hydrogen in air (1/25) won’t even burn. It is hard to believe then that 60 times less hydrogen will have a significant impact on the combustion of the gasoline/air mixture.”

  “This raises the question how you are going to achieve better efficiencies through a faster burn with the tiny amounts of hydrogen that *can* be produced with the advertised equipment.”

  I already discussed how flammability limits are affected by temperature and pressure. Let’s assume that we can produce 2 grams of hydrogen like these kits supposedly say. Therefore, every second we are putting about 5.6 x 10^-4 grams of hydrogen into the engine. Let’s also assume that 1.25 grams of gasoline (a good assumption) are used every second by the engine when the car is running at 60 mph and getting 30 mpg.

  The number of diatomic hydrogen molecules that we are putting into the engine each second is given by

  (5.6 x 10^-4 grams hydrogen) * [(6 x 10^23 molecules) / (2 grams diatomic hydrogen per mole)] = 1.7 x 10^20 molecules diatomic hydrogen

  For gasoline (iso-octane C8H18 has 114 g per mole), the number of molecules is

  (1.25 grams gasoline) * [(6 x 10^23 molecules) / (114 grams gasoline per mole)] = 6.6 x 10^21 molecules gasoline.

  The ratio of hydrogen molecules to gasoline molecules is

  (1.7 x 10^20 molecules diatomic hydrogen) / (6.6 x 10^21 molecules gasoline) = 2.5%

  So for every 100 gasoline molecules, 2.5 hydrogen molecules are present. Hydrogen is extremely dispersive so there should be no mixing issues. This is likely to have an effect but you can judge for yourself–the laminar flame velocity of hydrogen is 1.9 m/s while gasoline is 0.4 m/s. If we assume a 10 to 15 gram hydrogen production, which I think is possible with the most efficient setup then the hydrogen/gasoline molecule ratios are 12.5% and 18.75%, respectively.

• 65 Bob // Jul 24, 2008 at 04:20

  Well, you are looking at molar ratios, but consider that the energy from gasoline combustion comes from oxidizing each of the eight carbons in octanes which involves replacing all the hydrogens with oxygens and breaking the carbon-carbon bonds as well. All told, in one molecule of octanes has 25 bonds that each release energy during oxydation. Meanwhile, H2 only has one bond, so while you might have a 2.5% molar ratio of hydrogen gas to octanes, you only have about 0.1% ratio relative to oxydizable bonds.

  Also, nothing that we’ve said would disagree with the idea that adding hydrogen to gasoline would make the engine run more thermodynamically efficient. The reality is that hydrogen DOES burn more efficiently than gasoline, so it would only go to reason that adding hydrogen to your intake would increase efficiency over gasoline alone. It would also DECREASE efficiency over hydrogen alone. What we don’t accept is that you can have a net gain in power by transferring gasoline power into hydrogen power via electrolysis – the efficiency losses are too great.

• 66 buffordboy23 // Jul 24, 2008 at 05:03

  Your discussion regarding the oxidation of gasoline molecules makes good sense. I am not a chemistry expert, but I would expect there to be a plethora of branching reactions during this oxidation process. Is it possible that the hydrogen oxidation could be more kinetically/thermodynamically favored than the gasoline oxidation reactions despite the 0.1% ratio that you referenced?

  I appreciate your agreement that hydrogen addition to gasoline can improve the thermal efficiency of the SI engine. However, I don’t understand how you can simply say that the idea can’t work based on the total efficiency losses in the system. This is a really complex system and I think actual experimental data is necessary to make your argument irrefutable. This data would need to look at the overall general effect of hydrogen addition over a variety of engine conditions (rpms, torques, loads, etc.). Moreover, these results are likely to vary across all manufacturers because of unique engine designs, various differences in electrical components such as the alternator, and etc. I was able to obtain some graphical data from peer-reviewed journal articles that tend support beneficial operation of the device–it may not be over the whole range of engine conditions and may not be as glamorous as 60% improvement in fuel economy, but small windows appear to exist. Of course, the question is then focused on the assumed efficiency values in my analysis of the author’s data, but any reader can assume their own efficiencies to draw their own conclusion.

• 67 h.hyder // Jul 24, 2008 at 09:18

  the water for gas or water for car is nothing more than a scam. check out their return policy and clickbank. if you want to lose money all you have to do is make a purchase

• 68 joew // Jul 25, 2008 at 18:00

  buffordboy23,

  I checked out the graph from the study in the International Journal of Hydrogen energy posted on the physics forum.

  S.O Bade Shrestha, G.A. Karim. Hydrogen as an additive to methane for spark ignition engine applications. International Journal of Hydrogen Energy, 24 (1999), 577-586.

  What it shows is that at almost any fuel / air mixture ratio tested, power output increased by less than the estimated energy cost of producing hydrogen from water, i.e. adding hydrogen would result in a net loss of energy in most cases.

  The only exception was the curve for “equivalence ratio 0.60″ and even there any net gain would disappear if the energy consumption for electrolysis was doubled. If this was the study that assumed an engine+generator efficiency of 30% and an electrolysis efficiency of 70% then a doubling of the energy cost estimate would be necessary.

  Even without that, the fact that the measured power increase with the addition of hydrogen was smallest in the least lean fuel mixtures tested was interesting, because spark ignition engines with three-way catalysts tend to *avoid* running lean, with the exception of the latest direct injection engines.

• 69 buffordboy23 // Jul 25, 2008 at 19:40

  Joew,

  I agree with your analysis of this journal article data displayed on that posting. The was the first of three sets of data from journal articles that I presented. At the time of that posting, this was the only research that I was able to find in the scientific literature, and although its focus was on methane-fueled engines, I thought the author’s exploration of on-board electrolysis for hydrogen production was enlightening and may spark thoughts regarding its application to gasoline-fueled engines from forum-readers more knowledgeable on the topic than I.

  This is the article from which I base all of my assumed efficiencies–the authors’ never stated why they chose the values that they did nor offered any indication of their accuracy compared to actual efficiencies of operational car components. Perhaps as you suggested earlier, their values are optimistic. From my own searching on the internet, I have found the possible efficiency ranges that follow:
  SI engine: 20-30% (can go up by as much as 10% depending on the amount of added hydrogen)
  alternators: 50-90%
  electrolysis: 40-80%

  The other two articles are more relevant since they pertain to SI engines fueled with gasoline. The second article’s important data and experimental setup can be found on post #’s 48 and 63, and for the third article, post #65.

• 70 will // Jul 26, 2008 at 13:08

  This is dumb everyone is just repeating older threads. I have a question for anyone, this might help clear the air a little. What does a faster flame speed do in an engine?

  Here’s more references
  http://www.rockettbrand.com/technicals/documents/TechBulletins/FlameSpeedOctaneAndHpRelationships.pdf
  to get an understanding maybe the car educated people that think Hydrogen is a fraud may want to learn more before they open their yap.

  Ignorance breeds ignorance.

• 71 Bob // Jul 28, 2008 at 09:56

  buffordboy23,
  the reason you can’t produce H2 with gasoline energy and obtain a more efficient engine is this: if you expend 1btu of gasoline power to hydrolyze water, the MOST you can get assuming 100% efficiency all around, is 1btu of hydrogen gas. The problem is, even though hydrogen is more efficient than gasoline, it isn’t 100%. Even if it was, the most it could do would be to replace the lost power used to electrolyze the water in the first place. That is the problem. The gasoline used to power the alternator which created the hydrogen was only 25% efficient to begin with, so the 75% that was lost the thermal energy can’t be recovered – it’s gone. Only the 25% that wasn’t lost was actually used to create hydrogen, so really for 1btu of gasoline used to make hydrogen, even if the alternator and electrolysis were 100%, the most H2 you could get would be 0.25btu.

• 72 buffordboy23 // Jul 28, 2008 at 10:50

  Bob,

  This idea is wrong though. This is the same argument that most scientific-minded people use to attempt to “debunk” the electrolysis device: if it takes “x” units of energy to split water into hydrogen and oxygen, then the most energy we can ever get back from their combustion is “x” units; but since the system has numerous efficiency losses we actually get less energy back, and thus use more fuel by having the device attached.

  If this argument waw true and so simple, it makes no sense for academic scientists to spend taxpayer dollars to study the viability of such a system. See the following link:

  http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6V3F-40BPTC6-8&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=1351dd7f0100355b58fadef2ac1f20c1

  In this study, the primary fuel is methane but the application of the electrolysis device would still suffer from the same constraints as for a gasoline engine. The author states in his abstract that their are narrow window ranges at which the device is beneficial.

  As a last point, researchers are currently looking for alternative ways to produce hydrogen on-board. These alternative ways must also wrestle with the inherent efficiency losses of the SI engine. See this link about plasma fuel reformers:

  http://www.greencarcongress.com/2005/11/hydrogenenhance.html

• 73 Bob // Jul 28, 2008 at 23:27

  I used to be an academic scientist – for a lot of academic scientists, testing outrageous claims IS the point. They work very cheaply and it is figured that SOMEONE has to do it, so that is often what they do. Industrial scientists certainly aren’t going to waste their time with stuff like that. As far as the paper you posted, you did see this line in the summary, right?
  “This would render the whole concept of in situ hydrogen production through water electrolysis uneconomical in conjunction with engine operation”
  And like I said before, I don’t doubt that adding hydrogen to the fuel mixture increases the thermodynamic efficiency of the engine. Look at it this way. Let’s say you were a foreman of a construction team and you have 9 workers underneath you. Each worker can perform X units of work per hour so that all together they perform 9X units/hour. You find a new worker who is capable of performing 3X units/hour all by himself. If you add him, you could have 10 workers perform 12X units/hour, or a 20% increase in productivity. This part of the equation I agree on. But 1. it sounds like you are saying 9X + 3X might be greater than 12X? 2. We don’t have an external hydrogen tank here – you have to trade your current workers to get the more efficient worker, so now assuming everything is 100% efficient in the trade off, you need to get rid of 3 of your old workers to get the new worker, so the net result is 0. Also, because the efficiency of the trade is poor, you will end up trading of all 9 of your old workers for just 1 new worker and now you will only be able to get 1/3 of the work done that you did before.

• 74 buffordboy23 // Jul 29, 2008 at 01:56

  Bob,

  Nice analogy. I was actually toying around with a similar one.

  Bob said:
  “…it sounds like you are saying 9X + 3X might be greater than 12X?”

  That is exactly what I am saying. Now I must explain why I am not a crackpot and why energy conservation laws are not violated with this description.

  Bob said:
  “you need to get rid of 3 of your old workers to get the new worker, so the net result is 0.”

  Your suggesting that the trade-off between the gasoline used to produce the hydrogen is an even one-to-one trade, ignoring the efficiencies of course; three 1X workers = one 3X worker. Rather, your analogy should be something like three 1X workers = one 5X worker. Here’s why:

  When hydrogen is added to the gasoline it increases the efficiency of the combustion for the reasons mentioned in previous posts–basically, we are harnessing a greater percentage of the potential chemical energy stored within gasoline to do work in running our car. So another way of modifying your analogy is by saying that the “hydrogen” worker is a *motivator*; instead of the average joe worker producing 1X units/hour, now they may produce 1.5X units/hour. As long as this change in total units/hour among all workers is greater than the units needed to overcome the efficiency losses and to create the “hydrogen” worker, then it makes sense to have this “hydrogen” worker around.

  This modified analogy explains why the citation that I recently posted shows that the electrolysis device can be beneficial over some window ranges of varying engine conditions. However, you are right that the abstract says the idea is uneconomical.

  There are two main issues here: (1) Can the device be beneficial and improve fuel economy?, and (2) is the marketing of the product a scam?

  My answers follow:

  (1) yes, it appears possible but only under very limited driving conditions and it could also depend on the overall efficiencies and specifications of car components associated with the device. If you don’t drive consistently within this subset of driving conditions (low-load, steady cruising speed) do not even consider using the device. Why is this? The ratio of hydrogen relative to gasoline is greatest during these conditions, so the device can pay for itself and be beneficial to fuel economy.

  Here is a link to my Windows Live space page (http://cid-810ca62460f8699f.skydrive.live.com/browse.aspx/Public), which shows experimental procedures and graphical data from the two research articles to support this claim:

  Y. Hacohen and E. Sher. FUEL CONSUMPTION AND EMISSION OF SI ENGINE FUELED WITH H2-ENRICHED GASOLINE. Proceedings of the 24th IECEC, Arlington, VA, USA, 1989

  Maher Abdul-Resul Sadiq Al-Baghdadi. Performance study of a four-stroke spark ignition engine working with both of hydrogen and ethyl alcohol as supplementary fuel. International Journal of Hydrogen Energy 25 (2000) 1005-1009.

  (2) yes, the marketing of the product uses scam tactics–however, as noted previously this does not mean that the device is completely useless. These people want your money just like any other business, but they withhold important information that consumers should understand before making a purchase. I have not seen any marketers tell potential consumers, “Hey, this device isn’t right for you if you drive in stop-and-go city traffic all the time.”, or “This gadget needs a lot of maintenance; you may have to refill water and add electrolyte everyday, reconnect and disconnect it from your battery during every usage, and probably replace the electrodes on a frequent basis.”

  Sorry joew for the large number of posts, but I want to get the real side of this issue to the masses.

• 75 Bob // Jul 29, 2008 at 02:58

  Well, you can make the claim that the 3X worker motivates the other 1X workers to work at 1.5X (ie, an increase in the efficiency of the Carnot cycle), but you can’t get 5X H2 energy out of 3X gasoline energy. If you want 5btu H2 gas, you need to put in at least 5btu (assuming 100% efficient electrolysis) into the the water to get it. That is simple chemistry (and physics). If H2 + 1/2O2 -> H2O releases X energy, then going from H2O -> H2 + 1/2O2 will require X energy.

  That was where I was saying you lose the most efficiency in this process, is the fact that gasoline burns so inefficiently in the first place. Just to get the 5 btu gasoline energy just to spin the alternator, you need to burn 20btu worth of gasoline because 15btu is lost to heat in the exhaust.

• 76 buffordboy23 // Jul 29, 2008 at 03:12

  Your right. I agree with your analysis about the forward and reverse chemical reactions. The efficiency losses of combustion and electric power generation are the greatest obstacles to overcome. However, if the presence of hydrogen increases the combustion efficiency, it is very well possible to see benefits with the device.

  The following links are really mathematical, but show how such a scenario can occur. The first link looks at the theoretical energy needed to produce some quantity of hydrogen, how associated efficiencies (these are probably optimistic) increase the actual energy needed to cause the hydrogen production reaction, and the little quantity of gasoline that is needed to produce 1 gram of hydrogen.

  http://www.physicsforums.com/showpost.php?p=1806005&postcount=59

  The second link uses graphical data from one of the previously posted citations to analyze how the production of hydrogen on-board can increase fuel economy:

  http://www.physicsforums.com/showpost.php?p=1809899&postcount=65

  Unfortunately, the graphical data from this article requires subjective interpretation, nevertheless it illustrates the essential point. Also note that this study was done on a vehicle in 1989, so an analogous study on a modern automobile may show improvement with the specific fuel consumption values.

• 77 robt // Jul 29, 2008 at 07:58

  Science aside I have built ONE of these units from scratch with no money going to the “scammers”,I have dual electronic litres/100km displays in my BMW ,I drive 120km per day on the same route everyday,I have had the unit in my car for a week .My long term average has now dropped .6l/100km and my resettable trip average(over120km, average speed 60kmh) has dropped from 12.5-8l/100km to 10.5-11.0 l/100kms.This is also backed up by my distance to empty display which indicates a higher range per full tank of fuel and maintains a more steady rate of drop during idling and stoppages.
  Joew whatever your paperwork says I agree there is no “free”energy but this system certainly makes my car run more efficiently.
  As for gains in science well apparently we can now bend light and make particles invisible .
  who would of thought paint could change color depending on how you look at it. “aerogel” no it must be a lie nothing could insulate 8 times more efficiently than what we have now!
  open your mind!

• 78 robt // Jul 29, 2008 at 12:11

  @dave re vacuum and injection of gas
  If vacuum drops in a “gas” engine at hard acceleration explain how vacuum advance systems have worked for so long ,a vacuum pulls a plate around the distributer under spring tension,if the vacuum decreased how would it advance the distributor further?
  also most vacuum inlets work partially off a venturri effect ie the more hi volume air you pass over the port the greater vacuum you will create.IF you all look at the websites for example water4gas you will see that they openly display testimonials that do not support 50% savings.
  in fact they are so different it only lends credibility to the argument, for example if 4 people witness a car accident they will all give a completely different account.If the stories are the same generally they have collaborated.
  As for “overselling the benefits”what seller doesnt oversell his product?Bought a Big mac recently? tell me the one you bought was exactly like the one on the display board or TV advert.
  You guys haven’t even mentioned expansion rates of cold air versus warm ie (cold air injection) ,current draw versus buffering effect of a battery ie when your battery is fully charged the current draw decreases . I`ve driven a car over 100km distance without an alternator.not using any accesories!! how? car batteries have huge reserves!
  variable timing,ever think about that one.
  most current SAABs will adjust the timing and mixture the get the best out of whatever FUEL you put in it ,Hydrogen would classify as a fuel I believe.
  current draw as a percentage of alternator output, alternators charge between 13 and 15volts etc etc etc. if your not getting Carnots 25% efficiency ,there is always room for improvement!
  Joew its 25% by the way not 20% as you stated so we all like to quote favourable figures when the time suits us.
  I have seen the proof with electronicised digitized BMW hardware.
  I look forward to saving approximately $500 in fuel bills this year and five less times idling my car at a service station waiting to pull up next to a bowser.

• 79 Bob // Jul 30, 2008 at 00:29

  robt,

  You are talking about old ignition systems – they had a vacuum advance and a centrifugal advance. The higher your rpms, the more centrifugal force acted upon a spring loaded cam system that advanced the timing.

• 80 joew // Jul 30, 2008 at 19:23

  @robt:
  “Joew its 25% by the way not 20% as you stated so we all like to quote favourable figures when the time suits us.”

  Sure, there are some more efficient engines that achieve better results at specific load conditions (for example, the 1NZ-FXE 1.5 litre engine of the Toyoto Prius manages 34% when producing 13.5 hp), but they’re not typical.

  The Wikipedia article on the internal combustion engine quotes these two source for the ~20% efficiency of spark ignition engines:

  Quote:
  “most vehicles on the highways now have engines which have around 21% overall efficiency.”
  http://mb-soft.com/public2/engine.html
  “(typical US driving condition) 20%”
  http://courses.washington.edu/me341/oct22v2.htm

• 81 veejay // Jul 31, 2008 at 14:46

  there is already a water powered car here in our country… ever heard of it?

  try searching the name

  DANIEL DINGLE

  he is the one who invented it… but none so far invested for it… here are the sites where you can see the water powered car

  http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=UVhXrvCCILw

  http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=n-hjxFaLXAk

• 82 buffordboy23 // Jul 31, 2008 at 20:21

  veejay,

  He says one liter of water (1 kg) will run the vehicle for an hour. Here’s some scientific logic to prove how ridiculous this claim is.

  The chemical equation to split water is given by

  2(H2O) (l) –> 2(H2) (g) + (O2) (g) dH = 486 kJ

  Now he said that the products used in the engine for combustion are hydrogen and oxygen, so the this chemical reaction can only be the reverse of the one already mentioned. Since 2 moles H2O equals 36 grams of H2O, only 27.8*dH (13.5 MJ) of energy (27.8 = 1 kg / 36 g) can be released during combustion. So over the course of one second, 13.5 MJ / 3600 s = 3.75 kJ (about 5 hp) of energy is available for operating the car. This power output is so small, and note that we didn’t even discuss efficiency losses and the initial energy needed to break the water molecule via electric current from the battery so the power output is exceedingly smaller.

  The important conclusion to take home: This guy is full of BS.

• 83 buffordboy23 // Jul 31, 2008 at 20:46

  Veejay,

  Sorry, I should have been a little more clearer. If we do consider the efficiency losses and the energy needed to split water (the same amount of energy that is released during combustion), then the actual power output is below zero, which means he is powering his vehicle by some hidden and unknown means.

• 84 Bryant // Aug 2, 2008 at 10:33

  Never mind hydrogen cars, gutless, ugly hybrids and all the rest. The trick is diesels, folks. I’ve got an ‘81 rabbit pickup that gets about 40 mpg in town and up to 60 on the highway. On top of that, i’ve loaded it with over a thousand pounds of equipment and have had no problems. If VW had half a brain, they would bring these wonderful little trucks back. For those times when the little truck doesn’t work, i use an ‘87 MB 300TD wagon…for something that goes 0-60 in 7 seconds and hauls seven adults no problem, i am amazed that it gets mid 20’s in town. New cars suck. They’re ugly, overweight and vastly overpriced. hybrids aren’t the great environmental saver everyone proclaims them to be, and i’ll tell you why: What the hell are you supposed to do with the toxic batteries in the things? I say reject disposable cars. Just say no to constant consumption. Buy used, learn to fix what you own and if you can manage it, make your own bio-diesel.

• 85 joew // Aug 4, 2008 at 17:03

  Hello Bryant,

  your comment about hybrid batteries suggest you’re assuming they’re using toxic heavy metals. None of the hybrids currently made by Toyota or Honda do.

  Their traction batteries are NiMH (Nickel Metal Hydride), not NiCd or lead acid that you may be thinking of. Yes, NiMH batteries contain nickel (as does any stainless steel exhaust in any ordinary car with emission control) but
  a) that’s not a toxic heavy metal and
  b) it can (and will) be recycled as it’s economical to do so.

  I agree that diesels have great potential. Unfortunately low sulphur diesel, which would have been required for lowering particulate emissions (soot) in diesels, was not available in the US for a long time. Particulate emissions were considered diesel’s Achilles heel. Modern direct injection diesels with particulate filters running on low sulphur diesel are virtually as clean as gasoline engines.

  I see no reason to juxtapose diesels and hybrids. Both technologies have merit, even in combination: Several manufacturers are working on diesel hybrids. Given the costs of both systems they may only become economical once fuel prices reach a certain level, but they will come. Several hybrid trucks and buses already use diesel hybrid systems (as did diesel-electric submarines for the better part of a century).

• 86 Copparam P Ashok // Aug 4, 2008 at 18:46

  Assuming that these devices do work (After robt’s work, and buffordboy23’s words, I am inclined to think in a different direction)

  Getting additional energy from the HHO gas is completely ruled out, as the energy for splitting HHO from Water needs to be supplied ultimately from the energy from gasoline – and in the whole process of conversions we would only be wasting energy. It is just so basic fundamentals.

  The one point that interested me was, hydrogen flame velocity, and, its easily mixing ability. Is it possible that the presence of hydrogen, ignites the entire fuel air mixture fast enough, that the energy produced in combustion is sent down the piston, as against a slower combustion without the presence of hydrogen (my assumption, correct me if I am wrong), wherein a portion of the energy of combustion is sent down the outlet port to the exhaust? Or that little faster combustion, sends more energy down the piston nearer the TDC, than lower down, where there is expansion? Is this energy responsible for the higher fuel efficiency? After all, at 2000 rpm, 1 degree represents 83 uSec. I know that the combustion time is variable and depends on various factors, including temperature, fuel air mixture composition, etc., but have no knowledge of the energy release with respect to time from the word GO (let us say, the spark in SI engines). Joe, with your experience, and, data in your fingertips, is it possible this way?

• 87 joew // Aug 5, 2008 at 05:49

  Hello Copparam P Ashok,

  if fuel burns sooner after TDC so that more pressure builds up sooner, before the piston has moved much downwards already, that would mean that more mechanical energy could be retrieved from the same amount of heat. Work is force multiplied by distance. Therefore an increase in usable energy output from a faster burn is at least plausible.

  On the negative side, hydrogen has a higher tendency than gasoline to self-ignite, which is a performance killer, as it can lead to increased “knocking” in SI engines unless countered by reduced compression and/or retarted ignition.

  BMW has built a dual hydrogen/gasoline version of its 760iL luxury sedan. It started with a big 6 litre engine precisely because it knew it would have to detune the engine to make it work with hydrogen. Maximum power dropped from 438 to 260 hp, which is the main reason why its quoted 0-100 km/h acceleration time is a moderate 9.5 s, not much quicker than the 10.9 s of a current model Toyota Prius that uses an engine one quarter its size (1.5 L) to move around 5 persons in comfort.

• 88 John Mayer // Aug 5, 2008 at 13:30

  Joe,

  I don’t know who you are, but I’m glad I found your blog. A friend just, alas, had one of those magical water engines installed in his car, and I’ve been searching for a long time for an article that could explain to him in simple language – he’s Korean – why it’s not going to work. Worse, he’s in danger of being scammed into becoming a vendor of the things; he’d be selling them actually believing that they work, through the power of cognitive dissonance.

  I had to wade through an awful lot of web pages of people wanting to sell me a conversion kit or plans to make one before I got to your page. It seems there is much more incentive to put stuff on the web that is going to make you some money than to just put information out to enlighten humanity. So, thanks.

  As for the true believers, a correspondent sent me a valuable piece of folk wisdom that I’d never heard before, though it may be familiar to others. She said to argue with such folks is like trying to teach a pig to sing. It wastes my time and annoys the pig.

• 89 nick // Aug 9, 2008 at 09:20

  I tend to be a skeptic on this kind of stuff and by no means a scientist, but it seems to me like all of you are missing a single piece of the puzzle…….. the car battery. Everything posted here assumes that the electrolysis occurs directly from the alternator, when in reality this “system” is hooked up to the battery. Yes it still takes gas to run the alternator to charge said battery, but the battery stores x amount of energy before needed to be charged by the alternator……. so my question is how often does a typical car battery ger charged by the alternator and given that information, assuming normal drain on a battery plus the hydrolysis system, could it be possible for the system to create more hydrogen than the “best case” 1:1 ratio?

  this is a rough example of what i am wondering
  it takes 1mj of gas to create the energy to make 1mj of hydrogen(assuming a direct conversion engine>alternator>system)
  now add the battery which holds say 100mj(again rough figure for my understanding)
  and say the typical car used 90mj of the battery every hour. that leaves us with 10mj of reserve in the battery that the “system” can use to produce hydrogen before the alternator kicks on to charge it. therefore in that situation you have 10mj of hydrogen produced with no extra effort from the motor/alternator. Does that make any sense to you or am i completely off base here?

• 90 joew // Aug 9, 2008 at 23:45

  nick,

  the electrical system in a car is actually much smarter than you assume.

  The way it works is that the voltage regulators in the alternator always try to maintain a constant voltage in the car’s electrical system (at about 14 V), which is sufficient to keep the battery fully charged.

  At the same time the output current varies according to demand. As demand goes up, voltage would drop, but then the regulators step up output power until the desired voltage is maintained. Likewise, if demand drops, voltage would start to increase but then the output is regulated down again in the alternator and a balance is reestablished.

  The alternator produces power by spinning an electromagnet inside three set of coils, which inducts an AC current which gets turned into DC by diodes. By regulating the amount of input current that flows through the electromagnet it can regulate the voltage and DC current that come out of the alternator.

  As a lead-acid (PbA) battery gets charged, its electrode voltage gradually increases. As it gets full that voltage approaches the steady voltage provided by the alternator and the recharge current flowing into the battery from the alternator becomes minimal.

  Effectively the battery provides power only for starting (or while the engine is stopped with the ignition still on), while the generator provides power at all other times, including for replenishing the battery charge on the first part of the trip after starting the engine.

  On many cars the battery could actually be disconnected once the engine is running and it wouldn’t make a difference.

  The important part is that the alternator does not force a fixed current through the battery at all times, nor does it have a fixed output current. Current from the alternator and into the battery varies based on load and the charge state of the battery. If the battery is already fully charged and no other consumers are drawing power (such as headlights, radio, fan) then the alternator feeds little current and provides little resistance against the belt that drives it from the engine crankshaft. Once you start drawing more power (for example, by making hydrogen in a jam jar) the load on the engine also increases.

  The bottom line is, there is no “wasted electricty” available for making hydrogen without burning extra gasoline. This way, to make as much hydrogen as would have the energy contents of one gram of gasoline you always have to burn about ten grams of gasoline. There is no free lunch.

• 91 buffordboy23 // Aug 11, 2008 at 12:38

  Joew,

  Based on my previous calculations, the realistic maximum hydrogen production from a single electrolytic cell is about 15 grams per hour, or about 0.3% relative mass fraction to gasoline. This is not a lot of hydrogen in respect to the quantities used and studied in scientific studies. Still, I think that it is likely to have an effect but how can one definitively say that the added energy is greater or smaller than efficiency losses without a very strict controlled-experiment?

  In my own experiences with the device and in talking with other individuals, I think some other mechanism may be at work here as well.

  I have used up 3/4 of the water in a 1 liter mason jar in about an hour with one of my cell designs. This same design is also responsible for my best mileage per gallon measurement by far as well; 56 mpg for a vehicle that averages about 34 mpg normally. A lot of the water boiled away rather than being converted into hydrogen and oxygen, and I think this may have an impact on the results because of the following logic.

  One liter of water weighs about 1 kg, so 3/4 liter = 750 grams of water vapor fed into the air intake every hour; this corresponds to 0.21 grams/second. From a previous post, I said that 1.5 grams of gasoline is used per second, so the relative mass fraction of water vapor to gasoline is %14, significantly more than the hydrogen ratio. I would think that this would affect the lambda sensor’s oxygen measurement significantly, and the car would modify its air intake in accordance by adding as much as 3 extra grams of air for combustion. Being there are significantly more gases present during combustion, less heat is absorbed by the cylinder walls and more heat absorbed by the gases for expansion, which leads to an increase in the mechanical efficiency of the engine. This makes sense to me. Using a setup like this, however, may not be good for an engine in the long-term because of the large amount of extra gases.

• 92 joew // Aug 11, 2008 at 16:34

  Water vapor at room temperature is some 1600 times lighter than water, so 0.21 g = 0.21 ml of water evaporating per second would generate about 1/3 of a litre of vapour per second.

  If you think about a 2 litre engine doing 2000 rpm, the vapor may be in the order of 1 % by volume of the engine intake. Since air is made up roughly of 4 parts nitrogen to one part oxygen, the one percent of water would displace 0.8% nitrogen and 0.2% oxygen.

  I would not have thought that this small dilution would have much impact on the readings of the oxygen sensor.

  Why would the oxygen sensor setting affect the air intake, which is controlled via the throttle position? The engine management would modify only the fuel injection quantity. If it sees a relative 1% drop in oxygen (like altitude increase of about 200 metres or 700 ft), it should also reduce the injected fuel quantity by one percent to stay at lamda 1. This will cause a slight loss of power, which you (the driver) would have to compensate by opening the throttle slightly wider to increase air flow again.

  The bottom line will be the same, except for the energy spent for boiling water and pushing it through your engine and exhaust system (without contributing any mechanical power).

  It fail to see how this would get you from 34 mpg to 56 mpg, which is a rather drastic change.

• 93 buffordboy23 // Aug 11, 2008 at 23:38

  Joew,

  You are right. My thinking in regard to post 91 was flawed. For some reason I thought that there were O2 sensors located before the cylinders, rather than in the exhaust, and thus would affect the throttle position electronically along with the driver input.

• 94 buffordboy23 // Aug 12, 2008 at 02:48

  Joew,

  I was thinking about the water vapor mechanism again. The high temperature of the water-vapor may affect the functioning of the hot-wire mass-airflow sensor in the engine’s air take system. As a result, the sensor would send info to the ECU that the air volume is less than normal conditions at some throttle position and ambient temperature. The ECU uses this data as well as the lambda sensor in controlling fuel injection. With this idea, the ECU would inject “less” fuel since there appears to be “less” air volume; therefore, the air/fuel mixture is actually lean, improving mechanical efficiency. The lambda sensor would likely detect excess oxygen and send this data to the ECU to add “more” fuel. So, in this scenario the mass-air flow and lambda sensors are at odds, causing the car to alternate rapidly between running lean and at stoichiometric. Do you think that this is a possibility?

• 95 joew // Aug 13, 2008 at 22:07

  buffordboy23,

  since hot-wire mass airflow sensors typically also incorporate a temperature sensor, it should not that easily get confused.

  Warmer air means that less heat is carried away from the hot wire, but the temperature sensor will realize that this is because air is warmer and not because the air is less sense (e.g. due to high altitude).

  I don’t think that line of thought really explains how it might work.

• 96 buffordboy23 // Aug 14, 2008 at 03:37

  Joew,

  This setup will vary from car to car. I have 92-96 Toyota Camry Haynes repair manual that shows that the Intake Air Temperature sensor (IATs) is located within the air cleaner box, and the Mass Air-Flow sensor (MAFs) is located at the end of the air intake duct near the air intake chamber for six-cylinder models; four-cylinder models have a MAPs (pressure) rather than a MAFs.

  With the direction of airflow into the engine and the exact placement of the gas outflow from the electrolytic device, it is easily possible to bypass the IATs–the kits sold on the internet usually have a similar installation setup although they don’t refer to this complimentary mechanism that I now suggest. Therefore, the MAFs could contradict the IATs and O2 sensor according to the ECU.

  I still don’t know what the magnitude of this effect would be in regard to the expected voltage variation in the MAFs, but it is likely to be small. I wonder how car manufacturers program the ECU. I would imagine that voltage readings from the sensors are used in conjunction with some type of mathematical formula that determines the pulse width for fuel injection.
  I am not a car guru, but perhaps some other reader can provide a deeper insight into the expected effects, if any, of this additional mechanism.

  On another note, the Gibbs free energy equation, dG = dH – T*dS, does show that as the temperature of the water increases, the work needed to produce the same quantity of hydrogen diminishes, yet at high enough temperatures, steam in appreciable amounts is produced in conjunction.

• 97 Jay Mahn // Aug 19, 2008 at 10:31

  Thanks for playing. I installed a system on a 1999 GMC Suburban with a 7.4 liter V-8. My Hiway miles increased from 16 to 24. How do you explain that if the system doesn’t work?

• 98 robt // Aug 19, 2008 at 11:08

  thank you Jay Mahn ,it seems the guys using a bought system are getting much better mileage increases than my home made one but nevertheless from the time of my last posting till now I am still getting great figures. the only noticeable difference from trip to trip is when the temperature is very low outside .then I believe the gas is condensing in the delivery line . the same trip in reverse with the same traffic conditions but at warmer temperature delivers a much better visible outcome on the l/100km display.
  now if mileage was only better due to denser cold air my mileage should remain close to or if not, be better in the morning when the air is cooler.
  In short I am in no way a pig trying to learn how to sing,I am a mechanical engineer (not cars) and have an electrical licence.
  I have backed up this “scam theory” by trials,calculating actual fuel used and by maintaining exactly the same driving habits as before installing the unit.
  those who believe cars are delivered from factories at optimum efficiency and output, should band together and shutdown all the companies who”re-chip” vehicles for better performance and/or economy.They must be “scammers” as well.
  whatever you do or don’t believe, however it works,it works.

• 99 buffordboy23 // Aug 19, 2008 at 23:24

  @Jay Mahn:
  “How do you explain that if the system doesn’t work?”

  It is easy, the placebo effect. Numerous changes in a driver’s behavior can explain such results. This is why logical scientific explanations are needed, but unfortunately a complete description, at least to my knowledge, is lacking. I do believe you since I’ve obtained similar results.

  @robt:
  “the only noticeable difference from trip to trip is when the temperature is very low outside”

  Colder air is denser. This means greater frictional resistance for the car to move through the air, to pump or rotate lubricated car components, such as pistons and gears, and to rotate the tires against the pavement. Also, the engine loses more heat to the environment.

  @Joew:

  I agree with your section “Cooler running engine?” of your blog. Recently, I was looking at other forums and saw that many people reported a cooler running engine with the device attached. This prompted me to look more closely at my engine temperature, and sure enough, it runs cooler than without the device. This is a sign to me that the engine is running lean. A description of how a lean engine improves engine efficiency is in the last paragraph of post #91 of this forum.

  So, this leads to the question of how the device causes the car to run lean. My general hypothesis is that the sensor data is affected in some manner, which causes the ECU to shorten the pulse-width for fuel injection. Of course, many people modify there cars to make them lean, but I have seen very many positive reports for people who do not make such adjustments. If this hypothesis is correct, then this would explain why some people, who only use the device, obtain negative or no results while others obtain positive results: the sensor setup and ECU algorithm is likely vary widely across manufacturers and car makes. If time permits, I may explore this in the coming months by compiling user feedback.

• 100 bernard // Aug 20, 2008 at 14:59

  You can buy the system for 50 dolls. If you’re so keen in seeing if it really works or not why don’t you try it??? 50 dolls is the price of going to diner, movie and a couple of drinks in a hip bar.
  I don’t drive but I would sure try this stuff just for a laugh!
  thanks

• 101 joew // Aug 21, 2008 at 11:30

  bernard,

  can you answer this simple question for me: If these guys are so convinced the equipment that they sell yields the benefits they claim, why don’t they have it tested by an independent credible third party of their choice?

  Why should I have to drop my hard earned money into their pocket to test something for them that they themselves can’t be bothered to have independently verified, even though it’s their business?

  Let’s imagine a world in which neither cars nor pharmaceuticals would have to be tested before being thrown on the market. Would you be happy to crash test a car for Ford, or feed untested pills to your kids for pharmaceutical companies?

  I wouldn’t have thought so.

  Your line of argument comes straight out of these snake oil salesmen’s playbook: They tell their shills to ask anyone who questions the validity of their claims if they have bought and tried one of these systems, which is of course how these people make money, by people buying their untested kits.

• 102 robt // Aug 21, 2008 at 11:47

  @ bufford boy
  cold tubes condense gas right? isnt this how condensate forms?
  I have seen the gas in the delivery line condense into water at cooler temperatures.
  cold air expansion rates are better in combustion engines with cool air versus warm air because you are drawing denser air into the intake hence in colder temperatures I should get even better consumption.With the technology in oil today do you really think there is much more frictional resistance when the engine is cold(maybe for a few minutes) after all most engines maintain themselves at the correct operational temperature very well and car manuals delivered with new cars do not recommend”warm up” periods.Unless your pavement is made out of cement,try pushing a car on warm tarmac with warm tyres .most cars will spin the wheels better with cold rubber and a cold road.” more friction more grip right?less friction and my wheels will spin easier, try it, your wheels will always spin easier when the rubber is cold.to “take more energy to rotate the tyres against the pavement “try again.check out some drag cars and see what they do to the tyres before a run,they dont cool them down to create more friction thats for sure.

• 103 Copparam P Ashok // Aug 21, 2008 at 22:45

  Joe, Thank you very much for your time. I was away for sometime, and, have read this only now.
  So, doesnt this explain how you get better fuel efficiency? The presence of Hydrogen, makes the fuel to burn quicker, and, delivers some more energy to the piston (to the wheels), which would have otherwise gone into the exhaust?
  Assuming this works, it explains a lot of things. The amount of Hydrogen (with excellent dispersion & flame velocity) probably does not matter, and, even miniscular amounts are sufficient to ignite the entire fuel air mixture inside the piston relatively much faster. Also, it is not ‘lean’ fuel-air mixture which gives this additional efficiency. Efficiency of conversion of water to HHO does not matter, as very little of Hydrogen is required, because the energy from HHO is not responsible for this.

  How the ‘knocking’ is avoided, is probably to be answered. It is left to the ECU algos, which is varied. Or, is the fuel burning got just a little speeded up to cause any ‘knocking’?

  Now, about the guys who sell – They have no knowledge of what they sell – but found something that worked! – they have no infrastructure or knowledge or willingness to get into a business with manufacturing these kits – get it tested – all time and effort taking measures – but want to cash in what they have tested in their own crude way – they just want to make fast buck – so they are doing it this way.

  Just my opinion…

• 104 buffordboy23 // Aug 21, 2008 at 23:48

  @robt

  I would agree with you about the tires. I was thinking one dimensionally; colder surfaces in contact have greater coefficients of friction, and perfectly flat surfaces at cold enough temperatures can cold-wield together. Your description is more accurate because of the adhesiveness of the warm tires.

  The other affects are there to be sure, but may be small. The greater friction from driving through denser is likely to be the greatest mpg killer among the ones I mentioned.

  Here is another try. At the same throttle position, the same volume of air goes into the intake. Colder air is denser (more mass), so it makes sense to say better fuel economy is expected. However, my guess is that the ambient temperature sensor is connected to whatever sensor you have that measures air mass/volume, and this causes the ECU to lengthen the pulse-width for fuel injection, and negating the increases in mpg.

  @everyone

  I recently made a post in another forum and tried to explain all of the science behind why this device works. Also, I posted some links to the National Hydrogen Association where it shows that one of their members sells these electrolysis devices. My username is the same as it is here. Here is the link:

  http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=250932

• 105 Copparam P Ashok // Aug 22, 2008 at 21:22

  @buffordboy23

  I have read your other thread, and, see that you seem to share my views. Except the ‘lean fuel air mixture’ area. The amount of Oxygen added to the air intake by the electrolyser is so little, less than 1%, (I am not starting from molar volumes, as it is there somewhere in the thread above) that it does not make it ‘lean’, or by the ECU either. If the entire water (750gms/hr as mentioned) ( – 750cc * 22.4 / 18) is consumed for water vapor, this produces just about less than ( – 750cc * 22.4 / 18 = 933 litres) 1000 litres of water vapor (I have not considered the higher temperature), which again is very small compared to the 240 kl of air intake at 2000 rpm for a 2 litre engine.

  My reasoning of the engine running cooler is this way – With the addtion of Hydrogen, the combustion process takes place faster near the TDC, and, more energy is transferred to the piston. Now this additional energy comes from the erstwhile losses, which is more in the form of heat – others, light (Yes, the explosion produces light too), mechanical losses etc., remain the same. This lesser heat energy explains the engine running cooler. In addition, these electrolysers, by and large uses 12V straight, and, much of this energy (electrolyser requires about 1.5V only) is used up in heating the water. So the intake contains water vapour too, though small, which helps in running the engine cooler, though this effect is toa very much smaller degree.

• 106 buffordboy23 // Aug 22, 2008 at 22:51

  @Copparam P Ashok

  Your argument and description makes good sense as well. Other people have said this in other forums. I have considered this too, but haven’t been able to fully conclude that this would result in a net increase of energy.

  I agree with you concerning my previously stated hypothesis; the effect would be small, so it may have no effect whatsoever (?). The interesting thing is that a lot of scientific research articles explore hydrogen addition with lean conditions. For those that don’t know already, hydrogen allows one to run a car leaner without the risks to the engine to a certain extent, depending on the quantity of hydrogen.

  My electrolyser design could be modified to take better advantage of the applied voltage by using multiple plates in series. I am getting good results, so I haven’t been concerned with this design yet. The minimum applied voltage to split water is 1.23 V.

• 107 Copparam P Ashok // Aug 23, 2008 at 16:39

  @buffordboy23

  Or, alternatively you could have a DC-DC converter to reduce the battery voltage. These are pretty efficient 80% to 90%, and, compact. So you can avoid the bother of additional plates and the size. BTW, I am an Electronics Engineer, so my bias is on that side. You need to have the plates closer, though, or else the amount of current will reduce.

  However, you could leave things as it is, because it is probably not the quantity of Hydrogen, as Hydrogen is not being used for its energy content here, but as an igniter only. Assuming your electrolyser takes about 2A, that is only about 24Watts (or maybe 29W, as the alternator regulated output voltage is set at 14.4-14.7W) – too small to be ignored, considering the increase in mpg you get.

• 108 buffordboy23 // Aug 24, 2008 at 03:29

  @Copparam P Ashok

  The DC-DC converter is interesting idea. However, I have blown 25 amp fuses with the device–as the water solution warms, more current draw takes place–but have yet to blow a 30 amp fuse. So, assuming the 25 amps is constant over an hour, this equates to (25 A) x (12 V) = 300 Watt-hours.

  The theoretical energy needed to split 2 moles of H2O into 2 moles of H2 and 1 mole of O2 is about 27 Watt-hours at standard conditions (298 K) according Gibbs Free Energy equation. Of course, there are efficiency losses, so assuming a 60% efficient device, this becomes about 45 Watt-hours. I may be producing about 6 grams of hydrogen per hour (?). Warmer water does lower the energy requirements by a few watt-hours, but I have yet to decide if boiling water is a good thing or not.

  @everyone

  I received an email from an author of a research paper that explored hydrogen addition under lean engine conditions. This is a summary of his response to explain how it works for lean conditions: ” Hydrogen allows the engine to engine to operate leaner. There is extra air so this reduces the need to generate a vacuum for light load/part load operation. There are less combustion gases in the cylinder and not all are exhausted after the exhaust stroke, which results in a better value of gamma, the ratio of specific heats. Because of additional air, the combustion gases have lower temperatures, which reduces the heat transferred to the cylinder walls.”

  He also said that the idea will not work unless the engine is operating lean.

• 109 joew // Aug 26, 2008 at 23:14

  @buffordboy23,

  I agree, lean burn is the only possible route how adding hydrogen could lead to any fuel savings.

  Several manufacturers have used direct injection to enable lean burn on spark ignition engines in order to be able to do away with throttle losses. However I notice VAG (Volkswagen Audi) only claim a 15% improvement for their direct injection FSI engines compared to regular non-lean burn engines.

  Also they added exhaust gas recirculation and a second NOx-absorbing catalyst in order to avoid the high NOx emissions that normally come with an excess of oxygen in the combustion chamber.

  @Copparam P Ashok,

  a faster burn that leads to a higher working pressure in the engine closer to the beginning of the work stroke is a double-edged sword. Not only does it allow more work to be performed from the same amount of heat, it also puts more strain on the engine. That’s because the conrod hasn’t moved much sideways yet, hence downforce at this point would strain the bearings, in the same way knocking does. Therefore there is a limit how much efficiency can be gained here without wrecking the engine.

• 110 Copparam P Ashok // Aug 27, 2008 at 21:55

  Thanks, Joe. I was exactly thinking on those lines as the movement of the piston per degree is small near the TDC (or near BDC). In addition, even if the spark is retarded to just after the TDC, the timing advance mechanism at higher rpm of the engine, could fire the spark before TDC moving towards knocking. If it is well after TDC then there is probably no benefit.

  @buffordboy23
  Only 1.23V is being used for conversion, and, at this level the efficiency is less than 10%, rest of it heats the water up.

  About the leaner burn, the point I was making is that addition of such small quantities of Hydrogen (HHO) itself is insufficient to make it leaner. That is, if you want it leaner, you need to make it leaner.

• 111 buffordboy23 // Aug 28, 2008 at 03:01

  @joew and Copparam P Ashok

  I liked the info on post #’s 109 and 110. Btw, studies have shown that hydrogen can lower harmful emissions that are normal to operating lean.

  There is obviously a contradiction: I claim positive results, yet it appears that the vehicle needs to operating lean to obtain such results according to the research and the response from one of the authors. However, I do not believe that my results occur only due to placebo effect; of course, I haven’t proof otherwise at this point. The author’s response was vague in some regards, so I still consider modification of the sensor readings to somehow play a role for these results–the author never discussed this possibility. The steam mechanism seems very questionable (I haven’t heard or seen similar statements). The only other alternative that I can imagine is that the emission products are modified in such a way that affects the oxygen sensor. Still, it appears that 10-15 grams of hydrogen per hour is the maximum input for standard 80 amp alternators and semi-efficient electrolysis design, so its hard to determine if there is a significant effect on the overall emissions. What do you guys think about this idea? I also recently heard that the oxygen sensor doesn’t measure oxygen content in the exhaust directly, but rather the gasoline vapor, which is then correlated to the equivalent oxygen content–is this correct joew?

• 112 joew // Aug 30, 2008 at 10:35

  @buffordboy23:

  From all I’ve read the oxygen sensor really measures oxygen, not hydrocarbons. It measures oxygen inside the exhaust pipe vs. oxygen in outside air:

  ====
  Zirconium oxide ceramic along with a platinum coated electrode and a heater make up the major internal components of the zirconia oxygen sensor. The zirconia sensor generates its own voltage and is not reliant on the ECU to operate. The main element is the zirconia ceramic, which becomes conductive for oxygen ions at about 310° C. At this temperature, zirconia dioxide develops an electrical charge as oxygen ions pass through it. Since nature is constantly seeking to balance itself, when you place zirconia ceramic between environments with different amounts of oxygen, as the oxygen passes through the zirconia to offset the balance, the zirconia will develop a slight charge. The strength of that charge will depend on how many oxygen ions pass through it. The greater the difference in oxygen between the two atmospheres, the greater the charge developed. The zirconia oxygen sensor then uses a thin platinum coating to accumulate that charge, carry it to the sensor wires and onto the ECU.
  ====
  (http://www.sparkplugs.com/sparkplug411.asp?kw=Zirconia&mfid=0)

• 113 Tom // Sep 4, 2008 at 00:57

  To JoeW, Bob and others – Thanks for sticking to your guns here and making scientific truths available to us less scientifically knowledgeable consumers. I instinctively knew that this was just another of many “improve your fuel efficiency” scams when I saw an ad on CNN.com, but I couldn’t resist checking out the various purveyor web sites to see what their claims are. Amazing how they take pot shots at you for using science to make a common sense conclusion but how they consistently fail to use science to back their claims. If what these folks are doing wasn’t so shameful, I’d be amused at how they make their pitches while using terrible grammar, misspelled words and so many unsupported “facts” and “testimonials.” No doubt you’ve saved at least some people from lining the pockets of these predators. For anyone who is reading these blogs contemplating the claims of the scammers, you came here because you are skeptical. Go with your instincts.

• 114 joew // Sep 5, 2008 at 21:16

  According to website Aardvark.co.nz (http://www.aardvark.co.nz/ozzie_freedom.shtml) Ozzie Freedom of “Water 4 Gas” fame, whose original name was Eyal Siman-Tov, appears to be a Scientologist. His resume on one of his websites (http://www.sanecomputers.com/articles/resume/eyal.htm) includes a link to the website of the “International Association of Scientologists” and proudly displays a so called “Sponsor for Total Freedom” award that he received from the cult.

  Scientologists are taught that “75 million years ago [evil dictator Xenu] brought billions of his people to Earth in DC-8-like spacecraft, stacked them around volcanoes and killed them using hydrogen bombs” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenu).

  Of course these beliefs have no direct relationship to whether his “water 4 gas” plans work or not, but there is a connection. Back in 1995 it was estimated that to rise to level “OT8″ of the cult requires courses that cost around $380,000. Prices probably have gone up since then.

  So while you can’t be sure how much mileage you’re going to get out of buying one of these untested kits from Ozzie and his friends, the cult that Ozzie appears to be a member of is likely to get some mileage out of the course fees that Ozzie will be able to afford with your money

• 115 aryan // Sep 6, 2008 at 01:27

  hello your article is good and also accept that energy is transferring from one form to another. but you forgot that water is also created with chemical reaction in oxygen and hydrogen. we can break the atomic combination of water( hydrogen+oxygen) using electricity. and hydrogen is the most powerful fuel . when the oxygen and hydrogen is extracted . it is directed toward engine where the hydrogen burns with gas and push the pistons. remember Hydrogen release twice energy than gas or another form.

• 116 joew // Sep 6, 2008 at 10:36

  @aryan:

  We’ve been over this one many times: Burning energy-rich hydrogen by itself can not improve mileage if that hydrogen is paid for by burning an increased amount of (less energy-rich) gasoline to drive an alternator to make electricity for splitting water.

  If hydrogen stores three times the energy by weight as gasoline does then it follows from the laws of physics that you have to burn at least three times more gasoline to make a certain amount of hydrogen (considerably more if you take into account the losses involved in a combustion engine, an alternator and an electrolysis cell). You gain nothing by then using that expensively made hydrogen in place of gasoline.

  To give you an analogy: A US dollar is worth about 10 Mexican pesos, but it doesn’t follow from that that a guy in Mexico gets richer by changing dollars to pesos, if he starts off by buying those dollars with pesos. In fact he’ll end up with considerably less money than he started off with, because of conversion losses.

  It’s the same with energy carriers: Turning gasoline to electricity to hydrogen in order to replace gasoline ends up using more gasoline as sticking with burning gasoline directly.

  The only serious argument that can be made (and buffordboy23 has made it very well) is if hydrogen burnt *in conjunction with* gasoline can make the burning of gasoline so much more efficient that this makes up for the considerable energy losses involved in making hydrogen.

  There are studies that have demonstrated a net gain may be achievable under certain lean-burn conditions, but it has to be remembered that regular gasoline engines do not usually run lean and that there are various good technical reasons for why they don’t.

  Lean burn engines, such as the new VW/Audi FSI engines, have reduced throttle losses. They are mostly free breathing, like diesels. To make them work well required considerable technical effort, including a new injection system, new oxygen sensors and a new emission catalyst.

  You are not going to get there simply by adding a jam jar with water and baking soda and a rubber hose hooked up to your battery in 10-15 year old car.

• 117 buffordboy23 // Sep 6, 2008 at 12:45

  I think the steam mechanism proposal is a junk idea now. I modified the setup to bypass the sensors, and still obtained good results.

  Here is a new idea for criticism. We already talked about how hydrogen makes the charge more homogeneous and leads to a better burn. As a consequence, more pollutants such as nitric oxides, etc. should be produced during combustion. This would imply a reduction in free oxygen. The result could be that the O2 sensor measures an oxygen content that differs from the stoichiometric point for a given throttle position. In this case, less oxygen means the engine is running rich, so the ECU leans the mixture by shortening the fuel pulse-width so that the combustion products have enough free oxygen so that the O2 perceives the engine is running at stoichiometric. So in other words, the car is actually running lean and with poorer emissions, although the ECU thinks it is running at stoichiometric.

  By the way, these devices appear not to work well for drivers who stop and accelerate often, such as in city driving conditions. During heavy acceleration, the O2 sensor is ignored by the ECU, and the car runs rich to protect the engine. Perhaps, this lends some support to the idea above?

• 118 robt // Sep 8, 2008 at 11:54

  @ buffordboy re post #108
  I have reduced current draw by using two homemade units in series as I too found I was blowing 20 amp fuses.Therefore indeed putting too much load on the alternator.I also found by using a fluke meter and 12volt power source that I could vary the initial current draw by the amount of bi carb/soda added to the water.The current draw does increase as the water heats up but not as much as running a single unit.Best result now using two units on the same route to work 10.1 litres/100km average speed 60km/h outside temp 17.5 degrees.two units in series seem to produce slightly more gas but use decidedly less current to do this.

• 119 buffordboy23 // Sep 9, 2008 at 06:12

  @robt

  Thanks for the info. Here is a site that may be of interest to those who want to build and discuss homemade hydrogen supplementation technologies:

  http://www.hhoforums.com/

  There is a lot of great info/ideas on all topics (electrolytes, designs, etc.) concerning the technology. There is also a lot of garbage too.

  I would really like to see some data for O2 sensors, emissions, and fuel-injection pulsewidths of hydrogen supplementations vs. normal usage. Please let me know if find such info.

• 120 JR // Sep 14, 2008 at 08:24

  I like that theory – the replacing of oxygen molecules in the WBO2 thus affecting closed loop stochiemetric calculations (ECU reduces idc / thus leans out)

  You can test that theory by forcing the car into open loop and seeing if the fuel savings exist.

  Another theory could be that with modern cars the adaptive ignition / fuel control is altered to lean out & run more timing with the addition of hydrogen because hydrogen both adds stability to the combustion as well as forces the front 02 sensor to lean. Keeping in mind that vehicle manufacturers generally tend to map their vehicles on the richer side of the AF curve during acceleration (for safety reasons) it is plausible that the hydrogen is in fact reducing the amount of fuel entering the combustion chamber. This is not unheard of, it is the exact situation when tuning for race fuel, where ignition timing is advanced, fuel mixture leaned, and more power is extracted from the same volume of fuel. A good datalog and some dyno time should easily be able to test these theories.

• 121 buffordboy23 // Sep 14, 2008 at 23:17

  @JR

  Do you know of any datalog software that would be good for such tests?

  I see that OBD-II interfaces and accompanying software are sold in packages around $150-200:

  http://www.obdii.com/

  Do you know anything about the quality this software?

• 122 Car Runs On Water Cnn Convert Car To Burn Water Car Runs On Water Cnn | Toucans // Feb 19, 2009 at 20:38

  [...] The “run your car on water” scam Media fall for “car that runs on water” Mugabe wins battle, loses war in sham … I first learned about running cars on water by clicking on an AD on CNN.com. … [...]

• 123 Joe // Feb 23, 2009 at 14:22

  The anchor of CNBC can be heard saying in that famous anti-stimulus rant video that in Cuba, a lot of cars are running on water.

• 124 Joe // Feb 23, 2009 at 14:27

  http://www.cnbc.com/id/15840232?video=1039849853

  The distinguished professor of physics Y Zhao at the U of Ga will tell you, if you call, that there is no vilation of the second law of thermodynamics because there’s no “closed loop” to allow one. You have one process when you make HHO and another when you burn it with gasoline. Only if you burn only hydrogen is there a closed loop, and no one is trying to do that. BTW, if you look at the URL above. between 01:35:00 and 01:44:00 into it. you’ll see the anchor of CNBC remark how strange it is to see cars in Cuba “all running on water.”

• 125 Joe Wein // Feb 25, 2009 at 11:13

  Oh, a guy said that on TELEVISION? I guess it MUST be true then!

  (Sorry for being sarcastic!)

  But seriously, commercial television networks are primarily an advertising medium. That’s how they make money after all. Secondly they also provide entertainment, to keep people in front of the sets in between the commercial breaks. If you consider them your main source of *accurate information*, I’d say you’ve got a bit of a problem

  As for “hydrogen on demand” as a way to boost efficiency, I understand your point about burning hydrogen in conjunction with gasoline not violating the laws of physics, though many peddlers of “HHO”-kits fail to explain things this way and make it sound like a perpetuum mobile.

  buffordboy23 posted some studies about added hydrogen helping in lean-burn situations, but it’s by no means clear that the quantities generated by those DIY electrolysis kits are sufficient to make any impact or that any boost in efficiency exceeds the losses involved in making the hydrogen (heat losses in the engine, generator and electrolysis equipment).

  I’d like to see these wild claims of vastly improved fuel mileage independently verified. So far none of the people pushing these gadgets seem to be too interested in that.

  I presume you are the person behind the site you linked to (Joe Shea / HHOgames.com). Have you done anything to have a major car magazine or government institution do a road test on a hydrogen DIY kit?

  As far as Cuba is concerned, there may well be some guys there rigging up jam jars and wires to their 1954 Chevrolets, hoping to save fuel. For all we know it might work out about as well for them as the blockade imposed in 1962 that was meant to bring down Fidel Castro’s regime, but probably ended up helping him stay in power for half a century: It conveniently gave him someone else to always blame for all the economic problems in his country.

  Let’s get real and determine the value of ideas not by how attractive they sound when some guy tries to sell them, but by their actual results.

• 126 Joe Wein // Feb 25, 2009 at 14:17

  One of the links on Joe Shea’s site took me to another hydrogen-related site that sells gadgets to manipulate the oxygen sensor readings.

  Here’s a document where they try to explain why they are doing what they are doing:

  fuelsaver-mpg.com/doc/O2_general.html

  They claim their device needs to tell the engine to use a leaner mixture (less gasoline in proportion to air) in order for it to work at the normal mix ratio of 14.7 to one (air to gasoline). That’s the ratio at which complete combustion occurs and both CO and NOx pollutants are minimized.

  However, their explanation doesn’t hold any water (excuse my pun!).

  They claim that the presence of hydrogen results in more complete combustion and that this leaves excess oxygen in the exhaust stream, which is sensed by the oxygen sensor and prompts the engine control unit to add gasoline, resulting in higher fuel consumption.

  They claim they fake the oxygen sensor results only to counter this supposed effect.

  In reality, more complete combustion in the engine would mean that carbon monoxide (CO) is oxidated all the way to carbon dioxide (CO2), a reaction that consumes one extra molecule of oxygen for every two molecules of carbon monoxide. If “hydrogen injection” really enabled more complete combustion, this would result in less leftover oxygen, which in turn results in less fuel being injected (without tinkering with the oxygen sensor), not more.

  What they really are doing is forcing the engine management to shift to a leaner mixture, which burns hotter (possibly shortening engine life, especially valves and pistons) and also allows more smog-causing NOx
  pollutants to escape from the exhaust pipe.

  This most likely is the secret of how they can show any fuel savings at all: Yes, lean burn saves fuel at partial loads, but it will not work well in an engine not specifically designed for it and could cost you dearly down the road, not to speak of increased air pollution.

• 127 buffordboy23 // Mar 19, 2009 at 13:44

  Hi Joew, I check this site out every now and then. It’s good to see the topic being discussed again.

  You said:
  What they really are doing is forcing the engine management to shift to a leaner mixture, which burns hotter (possibly shortening engine life, especially valves and pistons) and also allows more smog-causing NOx
  pollutants to escape from the exhaust pipe.

  I agree. If you make the engine burn leaner by some modification, you don’t need “HHO” at all to get better mileage; it will kill your car though. The only way HHO can work is if the fuel map data is shifted due to the HHO inputs, so that the car runs leaner. I still want want to see data on the latter method (no mods, HHO only), but haven’t had the funds yet to purchase a labtop and necessary interfacing software. Apparently, this was done in a Popular Mechanics article and failed: http://www.popularmechanics.com/automotive/how_to/4276846.html?series=19
  I am still not convinced until I see actual data myself.

• 128 Al // Apr 24, 2009 at 11:00

  If this very simple technology really does work as described, then please explain to me:

  1) Why doesn’t some auto company implement it so that they can claim huge mileage gains for their vehicles and thereby absolutely BURY their competitors?

  2) Why don’t countries with no domestic oil production (nor oil-related industries which someone on this forum would claim are conspiring against the technology) give their Gross Domestic Product a big boost by lowering their dependence on “foreign oil” (and the expenses which come with such)?

  3) If this simple jam jar technology works so well, why don’t any of the “fans” who have supposedly BUILT such high-mpg systems go into business and make billions in profits? Indeed, you could franchise the idea (or even sell it through Jiffy Lube!) and have signs on the highway saying, “Let us improve your mileage over 20% and more! Only $199.95 and 30 minutes!”

  4) The politician (or even the President of the United States) who ends the nation’s dependence on Middle Eastern oil [our #2 supplier] would go down in history as a great hero — and would also lower our contributions to Global Warming. (!) After all, improved mpg means less oil consumed — perhaps enough savings such that American and Canadian oil sources would be sufficient! We wouldn’t have to send billions of dollars annually to an Islamic world that uses those dollars to support terrorism against us.

  Yes, even if someone can’t understand the basic scientific principles involved, it is easy to see that no “worldwide conspiracy” is going to be big enough and strong enough to prevent all sorts of people and nations from using the technology to make themselves RICH. Indeed, I see posts in this forum from people who claim they use this amazing technology to save on their car’s fuel costs. But why don’t I see any posts saying, “After seeing the amazing improvements on my own car’s mpg, I put such devices on every vehicles in my company’s fleet cars. It was such a success that I opened a retail store and installation shop where we converted an average of 25 cars per day in our first year. We recently opened our third location and we are discussing a deal with Sears Auto Centers for permission to use our trademark and design nationwide so that I can retire and live off my share of the profits. Yes, I would never have dreamed that I would be the first one to take a very old technology and make a fortune off of the obvious! It seemed too good to be true but it wasn’t!”

  Yes. I guess I will have to be very patient while I wait for such a posting here. (And meanwhile countries and companies will ignore this incredible technology and waste billions of dollars in oil expenses and leave billions in easy profits on the table. Yep. Makes sense to me. But I will always wonder who talked all of them into trading those billions of dollars for a membership in the biggest conspiracy in history.)

• 129 buffordboy23@hotmail.com // Aug 8, 2009 at 23:49

  @Al:

  You said, “If this very simple technology really does work as described…”

  I would suggest that a big part of the problem concerns “who” is actually “describing” this technology. The people vary as well as their descriptions, so this can be detrimental to meaningful discussion.

  What is meaningful to discussion? The best answer is objective scientific experiments. Yet, I have never once came across a single experiment in the literature that analyzes the device at its most simple form, a homemade jam-jar electrolyzer. However, I have found many scientific articles that discuss various aspects of how an analogous device may work and the aspects of hydrogen addition to gasoline combustion. For those that are interested, see the link to my thread on physicsforums.com:

  http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=304690

  It includes 13 sources with links from peer-reviewed scientific journals.

• 130 someone who ... // Aug 18, 2009 at 07:45

  I may have overlooked the answer to this question; but has anyone on this blog ever actually installed a water/hydrogen unit on their vehicle and documented the results, or is the information above all based on other peoples’ findings??? I would like to hear from someone who has done so without the political pressure of suppressing information for the oil companies or from those looking for additional funding for research. Perhaps a common man/woman that has used this type of product, and has first hand findings.

• 131 buffordboy23 // Aug 19, 2009 at 23:55

  @someone who:

  What’s the best way to document results? The first option is a dyno test, where the variables can be controlled. They cost about $100-200 according to what I’ve seen on other discussion boards. A second option to document results is to purchase an OBD-II interface and software to pull sensor measurements directly from the ECU while carefully running trials that will smooth out the variables (e.g. elevation differences). The software and interface can run about $200 and up. Also, emissions testing, which does not measure the proposed mileage gains, may be necessary to ensure that emissions comply with EPA standards.

  I haven’t seen any data yet concerning either option, despite looking for it pretty frequently. DIYers probably aren’t willing to pay that much when they can just fill up their tank and compute their mileage immediately afterward. “Professional installers” could easily have these tests conducted by a neutral party to ensure consumer confidence, but this appears to be absent among their online advertising pages, so heavy skepticism is warranted.

  Personally, I have installed a hydrogen supplementation kit on my vehicle and obtained consistent results of around 30% in fuel savings. It should be noted that this was only for highway driving, low-load conditions. The kit was of the most simple form, a jam-jar electrolyzer, that resembled something similar to the “water4gas” kit but with modifications (Note that I am not promoting water4gas kits in any way). With this device, I would often pull around 25 amps from the 12 volt battery, or 300 watts. Assuming 50% efficiency, this equates to 5 grams of hydrogen per hour (about 30 watt-hours needed to produced 1 gram at perfect efficiency), which is not a whole lot when compared to the amounts used to obtain positive results in the scientific literature. However, could it be possible that the baseline sensor measurements are modified appropriately on some vehicles (2001 Nissan Sentra for me) to enable the ECU to shift toward a leaner running engine, or the spark-timing is shifted closer to top-dead center because of the faster burn that may be enabled by the hydrogen addition? I can’t say with confidence until I am in a position to do some actual experimentation or see actual data, but they are the only two ways that this particular setup could work since, in theory, they could modify the heat transfer mechanism.

• 132 hydrogen generator // Nov 30, 2009 at 18:01

  Agreed. I see many people building their own hydrogen generators to save money on gas bills. Seems like the trend is gonna rise soon and most of us would be running our cars on water.

• 133 Joe Wein // Dec 1, 2009 at 09:38

  @hydrogen generator:

  You can’t run cars on water, I think we’ve discussed the physics of that in detail. That would be like a perpetuum mobile. Water is not a fuel.

  None of these jam jar electrolyzers have been scientifically tested. The guys who sell them don’t seem too interested in having them independently tested to verify how well they work (or don’t work, as the case may be).

  If you’re selling “hydrogen generators”, as seems likely from your pseudonym and the link you posted (which I removed), you’re not running your own car on water but on the money that other people send you after you make them believe that they can run THEIR cars on water…

• 134 AL // Dec 18, 2009 at 05:01

  Right! They don’t sell Hybrids either.
  What’s the matter? The oil company
  can’t buy everyone off, like they used
  too. Don’t like it heh!

• 135 The Affiliate Manual And Marketing Tool Kit - Simply The Real Deal! | 7Wins.eu // Feb 4, 2010 at 00:50

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